No Stone Unturned

by James W. Ziskin

  I went back to the lot and stared at the Plymouth. Something about its presence bothered me. I bent over and examined the ground beneath it, though I was sure I’d find nothing. I found nothing. Two times in ten days. The last time the Plymouth had given out was the day after Jordan’s murder. Or was it?

  “Vinnie?” I called, having circled around to the garage yet again. “What day did you say Tommy Quint brought that car in the first time?”

  “I don’t remember,” he said. “A week ago, maybe two.”

  “Can you look it up?”

  Vinnie shrugged his shoulders and threw open the ledger lying on the counter. His permanently blackened fingers slid over the names and numbers. He turned a page, then another.

  “Here it is,” he said, spinning the oversized book around so I could see. “Saturday, November 26th, one p.m. Why do you want to know?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing. I thought maybe . . . Nothing.”

  It was half past six, and Vinnie was closing up. I walked back to my car for the last time. I stared at the white Plymouth. Its headlights looked back at me, but I couldn’t read their secrets.

  “What a bomb.” A voice behind me.

  I turned to see Al Ornuti, Dom’s son, in coveralls. I nodded silently.

  “Those Plymouths are okay, though this particular job’s in bad shape,” he continued, joining me in solemn contemplation of the car. “But that’s the owner’s fault.”

  “Uh-huh.” I’d eaten cars for the previous ten days, and I wasn’t eager to pass the time talking about them with a grease monkey.

  “This one’s a perfect example of poor maintenance,” he said, motioning to Tommy’s Plymouth. “The kid that owns her called in a couple of weeks ago to ask for a tow. Dom’s wrecker was getting a paint job, so I told him we couldn’t hook him up until it dried. He calls again the next morning, Saturday, mind you, and wants to know if the tow truck’s ready. I tell him not before Monday. So guess what he does.”

  “I have no idea,” I said, ready to nod off.

  “He gets his old man to push it down here with the family car. And the killer is, he forgets to release the emergency brake! That poor car. It’s a wonder she still runs at all.”

  The image of Tommy Quint’s father nudging the white Plymouth along flushed all the tedium and frustration from my mind. Something new to concentrate on. My headache vanished; I knew. I knew!

  “Good evening, Mrs. Quint, my name is Eleonora Stone. I’m a reporter with . . .”

  “I know who you are,” she said, barring my path with the front door. “What do you want?”

  “I was wondering if I might speak to Tommy.”

  “What for? He hasn’t done anything. Why don’t you leave him alone? The poor boy. He’s been in such a state since Jordan died. And he’s getting worse; won’t go back to school, mopes around, refuses to eat. I won’t have you making matters worse by tormenting him with this mess.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’ve got a job to do. Your son saw Jordan Shaw hours before she was killed, and, like it or not, he has a responsibility to cooperate. A beautiful girl with a promising future was murdered. We owe it to her to find her killer.”

  Mrs. Quint wrinkled her nose. “She was asking for it, if you want my opinion. Imagine, a young girl like that meeting men in a motel room. She was not a proper young lady, Miss Stone.”

  “No one’s life looks pristine under a microscope, Mrs. Quint. We all should remember that.”

  “My son has gone out. I hope you won’t be offended if I don’t invite you in.” And she closed the door.

  I cruised the city, following the rise and fall of New Holland’s hills, stopping at every watering hole I knew—and I knew them all—in search of Tommy Quint. The night was cooling off fast, making for a chilly ride. At eleven, I pulled up in front of Fiorello’s and went inside for some hot coffee.

  “Where have you been?” asked Fadge, reading the New York Post at the counter. The place was deserted.

  “I’m trying to find Tommy Quint,” I said. “You know where he might be?”

  “Try Rochester. Isn’t he at school?”

  “No, he’s been in town since the funeral. I went to his house, but he wasn’t there.”

  Fadge shrugged. “He hasn’t been in here since Sunday when you saw him. I didn’t even know he was in town.”

  “His mother says he’s very upset by this whole thing.”

  “I believe it; he was crazy about Jordan. Tell you the truth, I’m worried about him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did something stupid, like Romeo and Juliet. He was just plain nuts about her.”

  I considered the thought: Romeo and Juliet. I had an idea.

  “Thanks, Fadge,” I said, and ran out to my car.

  Jordan Shaw was buried in Maple Hill Cemetery, east of town about halfway down Widow Sarah Road. It was a dark, deserted neck of the woods, perfect for a cemetery around midnight. I cut the motor at the entrance, and glided to a stop near the first headstones. I climbed out of the Dodge and set off toward Monument Bluff, a quarter mile away, where Jordan’s grave was located. Moving quickly, I crackled over broken twigs and dry leaves. A December breeze ran down the hill, muffling my approach and chilling my uncovered ears.

  Monument Bluff was a bald mound that protruded high over the surrounding hills, dominating the valley below. By moonlight it was one of the prettiest vistas in the state, and people paid fortunes for the right to inter their departed loved ones there.

  Jordan Shaw’s final resting place was a shaded plot near a towering maple. Beside her grave, as still as a statue, sat a solitary figure. At first, I thought it was another tombstone, but as I came closer, I recognized it as a human form.

  “Hello, Tom,” I said, just a few yards behind him.

  He nearly jumped out of his skin, scrambling to his feet and taking a defensive position behind a tree.

  “It’s me, Tom,” I called. “Ellie Stone.”

  “What do you want?” he panted. “Why can’t you leave me alone? I’m not hurting anyone here.”

  “No, you’re not hurting anyone here,” I said. “But I’ve come because of what you’ve already done.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, stepping away from the tree.

  “I’m talking about Jordan Shaw and Ginny White.”

  He stared at me in the dark. “What?”

  “You killed them both.”

  “That’s a lie! Why would I want to kill Jordan? I loved her with all my heart!”

  “Exactly,” I said. “You didn’t want to kill Jordan. It just happened.”

  “Liar! I didn’t kill Jordan or Ginny.”

  “Let it go, Tom. This is tearing you apart.”

  “I loved her, damn it! I didn’t kill her.”

  “You killed her, Tom. You followed her to the Mohawk Motel that Friday night and waited to see who was meeting her. You stewed for an hour or two until the guy left. Then you went inside, and things got complicated, a little rough, maybe.”

  “No! How could I have followed her that night? My car broke down that afternoon.”

  “Oh, I know that . . . now. It took me a long while to figure it out, but once I did, I knew it was you.”

  “You’re making this up as you go along! How does my car breaking down prove I killed Jordan?”

  “Because you followed her to the motel in your father’s car.”

  Tommy stared at me, jaw slackened. “You can’t prove that.”

  “Oh, yes, I can. You see, Tom, bad habits are learned, usually from our parents. Good and bad habits. You might learn good manners and bad penmanship from the same parent. It’s not a value judgment; it’s just the way things are.”

  “What are you saying about my dad?”

  “I’m saying he doesn’t take good care of his car.”

  “You’re nuts!”

  “And you’ve taken after him. I can prove you were at the Mohawk Motel on Friday, November 25th, because your father’s ca
r leaks oil.”

  “What? So do a million other cars.”

  “Not like your dad’s. It drips these perfect little triangles. I know you killed Jordan, Tom. Then you took her body from the room and put her in the car. You had an idea where you could bury her, a place you thought would be safe. But you didn’t have anything to dig a hole with, so you swiped the garbage can from the Mohawk Motel and drove out to the water tower. You carried her about fifty yards into the woods and scraped a hole in the ground with the garbage can.”

  “It’s all lies.”

  “No, Tom. There was an oil spot on the water-tower service road, and two more behind the Mohawk. They’re identical to the last detail.”

  “Your imaginary oil spots have surely disappeared by now,” he said, posturing like a savvy tough. “What proof do you have?”

  “I’ve got the proof,” I said. “I took pictures. And good ones, too. I can place you behind the Mohawk and on the service road on the night of the murder. I can prove it, Tom.”

  “I’ve got Jean Trent’s gun, you know,” he said, his voice beginning to tremble.

  My knees began shaking about the same time. I had assumed Hakim had rifled through Jean Trent’s place, but if Tommy had the gun, I’d have to rethink that theory. Then it hit me. The film. Tommy had ransacked my place, too, in search of Julio’s photos.

  “What were you looking for?” I said carefully. “Was it the pictures?”

  Tommy pulled something from his coat pocket: something that flashed in the moonlight. He didn’t point it at me, though. It just sort of hung from his limp hand.

  “Yes,” I said, drawing strength from Tommy’s wavering. “It must have been the pictures you were looking for. Afraid maybe Julio caught you in the act with his handy camera. Or maybe you just couldn’t stomach the idea that someone else might look upon Jordan’s naked body. You’d kill for that, wouldn’t you, Tom? You’d kill again, I’ll bet.”

  “No!”

  “Another man, looking at Jordan’s smooth skin, possessing her with his eyes. You couldn’t bear that, could you? I’ve seen her, Tom. I saw the pictures, and she was beautiful.”

  Tommy lifted the gun and pointed it at my chest. Damn, I was hitting him a little too hard. I straightened up, trying to still my quivering legs.

  “Give me the gun, Tom. You don’t want to kill again.”

  The gun flickered in the moonlight, and I could tell he was shaking. I took a step toward him and saw that he was sobbing. His eyes were clenched shut, tears streaming down his cheeks. I wanted to jump him, but my nerve didn’t go that far.

  “It’s true, isn’t it, Tom?” I asked gently. “Everything I’ve said is true.”

  His arm fell back to his side, and his body shook from his weeping. He turned around and dropped to his knees on Jordan’s grave. I saw the metal flash again in the night, and this time I found the courage to move. I dived at him and deflected his arm just as the gun went off. The bullet sailed past his right temple and disappeared into the night. In his weakened state, Tommy was no match for me. I pried the gun from his hand with little trouble, and he collapsed on the fresh dirt of Jordan’s grave, wailing from deep inside his lungs.

  I put a soft hand on his heaving shoulder, but I doubt he even knew I was there. “Eyes, look your last,” I mumbled.

  Tommy Quint’s father’s car was parked on one of the nearby pathways, dripping the prettiest isosceles triangles you’ve ever seen. Not that I had any real doubts by that time, but it was satisfying to see them just the same. I promised myself I would never again look under a car. Never again.

  Tommy Quint gave Frank Olney a full confession about an hour later. He explained that he had parked his father’s car on the dirt road behind the motel at about 9:30, where it dripped the first set of spots into the dirt. Frank asked if he’d seen Julio peeping through the window, but Tommy said it was dark and the heavy brush would have hidden him anyway. Tommy waited for Jerrold to leave around 11:15, then agonized for nearly an hour over what to do. Unable to contain his jealousy any longer, he slipped into Jordan’s room. She was bending over next to the bed, naked, drying off her legs with a towel after her shower. She didn’t hear him enter. Julio must have run out of film or had his fill, because he wasn’t at the window when Tommy let himself into the room. Retching from jealousy and desire, Tom watched as Jordan dried the body she had just given to David Jerrold, the body she’d never given to him. Then she stood up straight, turned to face Tom, her head wrapped in another towel, and he noticed she was holding the telephone receiver in the crook of her neck. According to Tommy, she jumped a little when she saw him, but smoothed the ruffles out of her surprise in short order. She seethed but didn’t scream.

  “Oh, my God, Ginny. I’ve got to go,” she said into the phone. “Tommy Quint just walked into my room. Can you believe it? Pathetic! I’ll see you Sunday.”

  She hung up the phone and then, to take her revenge, just stood before him, her skin radiant, and made no move to cover herself. Then she said something along the lines of “You wanted to see? Well go ahead,” and lifted her arms to display her nudity better. He saw the tattoo, could read the name, David, scrawled awkwardly into the most intimate part of her anatomy, a place she had just shared with another man. She was ruined forever. Even if he could win her back, the tattoo would always remind him of the man who’d sullied her: David. The name swirled in his head, taunting him, sickening him. Tommy crumbled to the floor and wept uncontrollably.

  Finally, in disgust, Jordan unwrapped the towel from her head and stormed into the bathroom to dry her hair. She railed at him from behind the half-closed door, emasculated him, ridiculed him, mimicked his sobbing. How dare he follow her? How dare he intrude into her personal life? How dare he walk into her room without knocking? She told him she never wanted to see him again, that he was a despicable crybaby and a Peeping Tom besides. Rubbing the towel through her hair, she never heard him approach from behind.

  The sheriff told me he had listened with a dry mouth as Tommy described Jordan’s naked back, her perfect buttocks, her willowy legs—the last image he had of her alive, before his eyes filled with blood, and he grabbed her around the neck. The next thing he remembered was laying her dead body on the bed.

  He ran scared, drove up to the lake, and wandered through the woods for about an hour. Then his mind went to work, and he decided he had to move the body before someone discovered it. He drove back to the motel, parked the car a few feet from where it had dripped oil the first time, and returned to Jordan’s room to find the bloody mess. Roy had already been there, and Jordan’s pelvis bore the grizzly wound. Her clothes and purse were gone; things had been rearranged. Tommy was too confused to know exactly what had happened, but he was lucid enough to realize someone had sliced out a piece of Jordan’s flesh.

  The sight of her bloodied pelvis sickened Tommy, and, later on, in an irrational state of mind, he convinced himself that someone else had actually murdered her. But at that moment, he hoisted her over his shoulder and carried her out back to his car. Then he returned to snatch the garbage can. Twenty minutes later, he smeared the last of the mud and leaves over her body in Wentworth’s Woods.

  Frank asked him about Ginny White, and Tommy gave an economical description of what had happened: Ginny knew he had barged into Jordan’s motel room and would tell the police everything she’d heard on the phone. He took his father’s car to Boston on Saturday afternoon, went to the girls’ apartment, and rang the bell. Ginny felt funny letting him in after the phone conversation with Jordan the night before, but she thought he needed some compassion. When she turned her back, he clubbed her to death with a tire iron he’d grabbed from his father’s trunk. Then he returned home late Saturday night and boarded a bus for Rochester the following morning, arriving at school just hours before I phoned him.

  Tommy completed his statement, closed his mouth, and didn’t open it again. He just stared into space. Pat Halvey led him downstairs, shut him in the mid
dle cell, and took up the suicide watch. Frank just shook his head, saddened and numb.

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1960

  I used the remaining three hours before dawn to write the final story on the Shaw-White murders. When I arrived at the paper at eight o’clock, I strode into Artie Short’s office and handed my copy to the publisher himself. I watched him read it. His expression did nothing to betray his thoughts as his eyes ranged across the lines, one by one. Finally, when he had finished, he tossed the pages back across his desk without even looking at me.

  “Print it.”

  Two weeks after Tommy Quint’s arrest, Judge Shaw invited me to his law office on Main Street for a late-afternoon meeting. He thanked me on behalf of himself and his wife, who was not present.

  “In truth, I doubted you from the first moment I heard about you,” he said. “Fred Peruso assured me you were my best bet, but I was skeptical.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

  “But,” he said, pausing for several beats, “you, of course, proved me and my wife wrong. For that, I am grateful to you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever known, Miss Stone. And it’s not gone away. It never will. I suppose you could have told me that the first night we met.”

  I watched him, without a word, breathing slowly and deeply. He wouldn’t look at me, just stared at something on the floor somewhere across the room.

  “I take no satisfaction that Tommy Quint will pay for this crime. It’s a horrible tragedy in these modern times. Of course I’m relieved that there is a resolution, an end to the . . .” he searched for a word, apparently failed. “An end to the not knowing,” he managed finally. “Now I can mourn my daughter without the added torture of simply not knowing.”

  He stopped, looked at me pointedly, and asked if I felt that way about my father. Now it was my turn to look away at nothing in particular.

  “It was different with my father,” I said. “I let him down, disappointed him till the day he died, alone in that hospital bed. You didn’t let Jordan down.”