No Stone Unturned

by James W. Ziskin

  “Don’t say a word,” whispered Fadge, doing his best imitation of my own midnight caller. I’d coached him beforehand but was impressed by his flair. He was great! “Keep your mouth shut and listen,” he continued, “or you’ll never solve the Shaw murder. The case has been botched by the police, and fouled up by your stupid paper from the start. Evidence was stolen. There are photos of the murder. The Puerto Rican kid shot pictures through the bathroom window, but someone grabbed the film when they searched the motel. That’s your tip, Bozo, don’t blow it,” and he hung up before Georgie could utter a syllable.

  Fadge took me to Tedesco’s for a pizza after closing, then dropped me home around two. The wheels were in motion.

  Monday night brought a black sky and freezing temperatures, the coldest of the season. I pulled a second quilt out of the closet and threw it over the bed, but I still didn’t sleep well. A half pizza, washed down with several Scotches, doesn’t agree with me, no matter how nice the company.

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1960

  Monday morning, I rolled out of my warm bed around eight and shuffled into the bath. I felt lousy, but the memory of Fadge’s performance the night before cheered me. I stopped by Fiorello’s for a coffee and a poppy-seed roll. Feeling my oats after breakfast, I had an idea of where to find Julio’s stash.

  “Wish me luck, Fadge,” I said, heading for my car. The Royal Lancer roared to a start on the first turn of the key, and I blessed Charlie Reese.

  Lake Winandauga. Its name suggests a quiet waterway nestled amid tall pines; a place where Indians in their canoes once sliced through cool, clear water; a miracle of nature, discovered and settled millennia ago by the natives. Actually, the Army Corps of Engineers built the lake in 1936 when they stopped up a dripping stream known as Winandauga Creek. It was a WPA project, part of a larger plan to control the Hudson River’s water levels and stabilize the reservoirs downstate. The dam also provided a modest source of electricity for the surrounding area, and the leisure preserve was gravy.

  The farmland in the valley above Winandauga Creek became lakebed, and cheap, sleepy forest was transformed into valuable beachfront. Victor Trent had bought some of the land in the early ’30s, a few years before the lake project was announced, and he hit the jackpot. As Frank Olney put it: “Third-class fellow, first-class luck.” Later, Trent built an enchanting cottage beneath a canopy of thick, verdant trees, about forty yards from the water. The view from the porch was a sublime panorama of rolling hills, blue water, and lazy skies. I wondered how I could ever afford such bliss on my meager salary. Assuming I could hold onto my job at all . . .

  The house was closed for the winter, padlocked and deserted. I got through a window easily enough, though, and found myself in a small parlor. There were a few books—old furniture-repair manuals and Reader’s Digest condensed novels—and piles of movie and crime magazines. A black-and-white print of Jean Trent in a wistful pose dominated the room from the brick fireplace’s mantelpiece. I peeked into a few drawers, finding nothing but pencils, a yellowing pad of paper, candles, and a box of kitchen matches. In the bedroom, two dusty twin mattresses were rolled up on top of a narrow double bed. A warping chest of drawers against the wall was empty except for two bags of mothballs and more candles. My search of the closets produced no cameras or film. There was no basement or attic. I squeezed back through the window I’d jimmied and explored the grounds.

  The property fronted the lake on the north side. A sloping grass lawn led to the water, where a wooden dock reached thirty feet into the lake. Along the shore, a clean, stony beach broke the gentle waves. Foraging into the woods near the shore, I came across a rusting corrugated-tin shed. The lock didn’t hold for long, but there was nothing worth seeing inside—an old outboard motor, two splintering oars, faded orange life jackets, and some fishing gear. I tramped through the woods flanking the lawn, pushed through a thicket of weed trees, and there it was. In the small clearing before me sat the weathered Pontiac station wagon.

  A glance through the windows showed nothing inside. I was discouraged and, had I not searched so long, probably would have given up there. But I decided to break a window and have a closer look. Nothing under the seats, still nothing in the glove compartment. Then I looked in the back and spotted the spare-tire well. There was no tire inside. Hidden in the belly of the car was my trove.

  A Kodak Pony 135, about ten years old; a dozen or so rolls of film; a medium zoom; jars marked silver nitrate, hypo, and fixer; clothes pins—the kind with spring jaws; twenty feet of clothes line; an enlarger; and a box of Kodak photosensitive paper. At the bottom, sealed in a protective envelope, I found about a hundred black-and-white negatives. My skin crawled. These were the fruits of Julio’s long hours spent spying through bathroom windows. But after twenty minutes of squinting at negative images of rumpled beds and naked bodies, I gave up. As far as I could see, there were no pictures of Jordan (or of me, for that matter) anywhere in the bunch.

  I put the negatives back, covered Julio’s equipment in the tire well, then searched the rest of the car. I ran my hand along the floors, dug into the crevasses of the fraying thatch of seat fabric, and inspected the engine and undercarriage of the car. No exposed film or negatives hidden anywhere.

  As I clapped my hands clean, wondering if I’d neglected some clever hiding spot in or on the car, I heard a twig snap behind me.

  I reeled around to locate the source of the noise, but it was a gray day in thick woods. An eerie silence followed. Nothing stirred.

  “Who’s there?” I asked. No answer. “Who’s there?”

  Still no answer. I turned slowly, scanning the dense trees for some color, some human life. Then a figure stepped up behind me.

  I recognized him at first sight: the creepy guy who’d watched me from across the room at Tedesco’s the night of Jordan Shaw’s wake. Greg Hewert. I was actually relieved; at least it wasn’t Pukey Boyle.

  “Greg, you scared me,” I panted. “What are you doing here?”

  He said nothing, just took a step toward me. His mouth hung open slightly on one side in a strange, lopsided smile, as he stared at me with hungry, blank eyes. He took another step. I recoiled, backed up into a tree, and froze.

  “What are you doing, Greg?” I asked more insistently.

  “Come on, Ellie,” he said. “I’ve asked around. It’s not all work for you, is it? You like a good time, don’t you?”

  “Get out of my way,” I said and tried to push past him. He barred the path and forced me back against the tree.

  “Come on, don’t go rushing off. We’re just getting to know each other.”

  “What do you want?”

  “The same as you. I saw the way you looked at me at Tedesco’s and at the funeral parlor. Then you called me to flirt, didn’t you?”

  “Are you sick?” I asked, sneering at him. “I was looking at everyone. And I was doing my job when I called you.”

  “You don’t have to act. I know when a girl’s interested, and you’re not exactly saving yourself for Mr. Right, are you?”

  He took another step toward me.

  “Wait a minute, Greg,” I stammered, holding my hands out. “Don’t touch me! I know karate.” No effect, and a lie to boot. He continued his menacing approach.

  I made another dash to get by him, but he grabbed my arm and wrenched it, yanking me toward him.

  “Let me go, you creep!” I yelled. “Take your hands off me!”

  I pulled and tried to run, but he held fast, and I slapped him hard on the cheek. His eyes ran bloodred, and he reeled me back in, wrapping his other arm around my shoulders, crushing my face against his chest. I squirmed and fought, thrashed legs and arms, losing both my shoes, but he only squeezed tighter, now cutting off my breathing. As the struggle went on, as the air became scarcer, I was seized with the panic that I would suffocate. I dug my nails deep into his arm and raked them over his skin. He roared, and his determination turned instantly to a violent anger. He threw me to t
he ground like a ragdoll and fell on top of me, knocking what little wind I had left out of me. My chest burned for air, and I thought I would lose consciousness. Then he pushed up off me, and I gasped for breath, but my lungs wouldn’t fill.

  Greg slobbered on me, saliva bubbling and dripping from his mouth as he struggled to immobilize my flailing arms. He yanked my coat off my shoulders and clutched the neck of my blouse. For the first time in my life, I doubted my knack of wriggling out of tight situations with persistent men. I’d done it so many times, always able to avoid the worst. But this time was different. He was going to rape me.

  I screamed. He clamped one hand over my mouth and clawed at my blouse with the other, tearing the fabric and my brassiere and scratching my chest in the process. I continued to thrash about beneath him, twisting, kicking, and spitting. Then he took me by the shoulders, hoisted me roughly off my back, and slammed me back down, bouncing my head off the muddy ground. And he did it again, and a third and a fourth and a fifth time, until I went limp, dazed, gasping for air as my addled head swam. Now he positioned himself atop of me, straddling me on the wet ground, and pinned my arms over my head. I wasn’t moving, could no longer fight back. Then he pulled my blouse up over my face. He was breathing hard; I could hear it, feel it on my bare torso, as he reached under my skirt and began to rip and pull the fabric.

  Then he fell forward onto my head, into the mud, relinquishing his hold on my clothing and on my body. He crawled off me, and I heard a grunting and commotion. I rolled to my left and pushed the torn blouse out of my face. Looking back over my shoulder, panting like a drowned man rescued on the shore, I saw a large man in a black pea jacket throttling Greg Hewert, punching him repeatedly in the head, reducing him to a whimpering, semiconscious, curled mass within mere seconds.

  The man in black hovered over his defeated opponent like a gladiator in victory, huffing in the cold air, relishing his dominance before the coup de grâce. Then he planted a heavy boot broadside into his prostrate victim, driving a deep, heaving grunt from his belly, over his diaphragm, and out his lungs. Greg lay on the ground, bleeding from the nose and mouth, and gasping for breath. I watched, transfixed, unable to move, trying to regain my own wind. Then, realizing too late I’d lost my chance to flee, I remembered the man in the black peacoat.

  His adversary humbled and down for the count, he turned to me. That’s when I saw it was Pukey Boyle, as tall as a mountain and twice as strong as the man who’d tried to rape me.

  Pukey hiked up his collar and slapped some imaginary dirt from his hands. “I don’t like that guy,” he muttered sullenly as he approached me.

  I retreated, crab-walked backward in the mud, trying to escape him. I caught sight of his shoes: heavy, black biker’s boots, not good for running. Then I looked up at him again, weighing my chances for a successful run for it, and I saw the insult and offense in his hard eyes, as if my fear had wounded him to the core. I stopped. After a moment, he took a step forward and offered his hand.

  “You all right?”

  I took his hand. He tried to help me up, but I wasn’t ready. Sitting in the mud, my skirt still hiked up around my waist, I dissolved into hysterical sobbing. Pukey knelt in the mud and wrapped his arms around me.

  I wept wildly into his chest, shaking with terrors, just now realizing the horror I had dodged. In that moment, I wanted only to cleave to the man who’d saved me from such an unspeakable fate. I gasped and choked, as much from the near asphyxiation I’d suffered as for the rape I’d narrowly escaped. My head pounded, and my arm ached where Greg had twisted it near the tree.

  Pukey patted my back and soothed me as a mother would. He folded my skirt back to its intended length, adjusted my blouse, and buttoned my coat over it, restoring my modesty to me. At length, my breathing slowed, my sinews slackened, and a sense of numbness overcame me.

  “Come on,” he said finally. “You need to see a doctor.”

  I stared at him, blinking slowly, my pupils surely dilated from the pounding my head had taken. I think I looked over at Greg Hewert, still flat on the ground.

  “No cops,” said Pukey, shaking his head. “They’ll ruin your reputation. I’ll take care of him later. He won’t bother you again. Trust me.”

  I was groggy, unaware of where I was or the day of the week, but I seem to recall hearing Buddy Holly singing “True Love Ways” as we raced down Route 5 toward New Holland. Then Sam Belson was holding up several fingers for me to count, and I vomited in the emergency room.

  Hours later, I sat up in my hospital bed and wondered where I was. Fadge touched my arm and told me I was okay.

  “Where’s Pukey?” I asked.

  “He left,” said Fadge. “He said him and a buddy had some business to take care of. But what I don’t get is how you fell down a hill and hit your head. What were you doing, anyway?”

  “Fell down a hill? What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Boyle said you fell down a hill and hit your head. You probably don’t remember anything.”

  I turned away on the pillow and said nothing.

  I had suffered scratches, bruises, and a concussion, but no broken bones. By evening, I felt better. The nausea had passed, and the Darvon had dulled the pain in my head and back. Dr. Williston, a tall, avuncular man of seventy or seventy-five, insisted I spend the night for observation, but he was confident I could leave in the morning.

  “Just one thing, young lady,” he said to me when we were alone. He peered at me through his black, horn-rimmed glasses, as if trying to read my mind. “I’ve spoken to Dr. Belson about your injuries, and we both have come to the same conclusion. Is there something you want to tell me about what happened to you?”

  I gulped, looked away, and shook my head as vigorously as I dared.

  “You have scratches on your chest and upper thighs,” he continued softly and slowly. “Your mouth and wrists show signs of contusions, and your underclothing was torn.” He paused to give more weight to his statement. “That young man who brought you here, did he do this to you?”

  “No! I fell down a hill,” I said. “I just fell down a hill.”

  He touched my hand softly, still gazing into my eyes, still searching for the truth. “Would you rather speak to a nurse about this?”

  “I fell down a hill.”

  I lay in the low light, staring out the hospital window, when I became aware of a presence in the room. Without looking, I knew it was Pukey Boyle.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “That’s my business,” he said, sitting on an aluminum chair, leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees.

  “You were following me,” I said. “But then I hadn’t seen you for a few days.”

  “That’s because a guy’s got to take a number to tail you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean between Joe Varsity and the other guy, I was so far behind you, you couldn’t have seen me.”

  “Other guy?”

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1960

  Next morning I was discharged from St. Joseph’s, and Fadge came to take me home. He tucked me into my bed, boiled me some tea, and served me biscuits. He was so sweet, indulgent, and gentle, that it nearly broke my heart to wish he’d leave. When he finally did, I threw back the covers and jumped out of bed. My head still hurt, but a couple of aspirins would help that. Pukey honked a couple of minutes later, and I slipped down the stairs and into the Maroon Hudson Hornet that had so unsettled me just days before. I prayed Fadge wasn’t watching from across the street.

  Like embarrassed lovers, we didn’t say much at first beyond hello. Pukey roared down Market Hill, over East Main Street, and onto Route 5. More than anything, I wanted to ask him why he had been following me, why he had wanted to help me. But I was afraid of what the answer would be. If what I suspected was true, I didn’t know how to reject a man who’d saved me from the horror of rape. So I kept my question to myself.

  The Hudson hummed along the river at seventy miles
per hour, and we spoke about Greg Hewert.

  “Why do you think he did what he did to me?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Maybe he doesn’t like what you wrote about Jordan. Or maybe he’s just got blue balls. You’re a nice piece of action, Ellie. Who wouldn’t want to have a roll with you?”

  “Do you think he loved her?” I asked, ignoring his inelegant compliment. “Do you think he loved Jordan?”

  Pukey laughed, glanced at me and then back to the road. “What gave you that idea?”

  “Fran Bartolo. She said Greg and Jordan had a thing about four years ago. Did Jordan ever mention it to you?”

  Pukey shook his head, not by way of an answer, but in amused disbelief. “Four years ago, you say?” and he threw back his head in laughter.

  “Fran Bartolo said Glenda Whalen caught the two of them sneaking around.”

  “Tell me what the Whale saw, and we’ll put your brain power to work, Nancy Drew.”

  I thought a second, my memory still foggy from the concussion, but still managed to be impressed that Pukey had heard of Nancy Drew. “Franny said that Glenda had seen Greg’s car there, and that the judge and his wife were out of town.”

  “Can you be sure of that information?” asked Pukey. “Did you check on that story? A good reporter should be sure.”

  “Audrey Shaw contradicted Fran’s version,” I said. “Quite vehemently, in fact. She swore she didn’t go with the judge on that trip.”

  “So, can you think of any other possible explanation for why Greg’s car was in their driveway?”

  Pukey’s drift was unmistakable; he’d practically spelled it out for me.