No Stone Unturned (2 page)

Peruso joined me to examine her lower abdomen. “What the . . . ?” he said, brushing some dirt away and exposing a two-inch, horizontal gash in her skin on the left side, about an inch above the line of her pubic hair. Frank Olney joined us, peered over Doc Peruso’s shoulder, and swore to himself.

I backed off to shoot the torso, pelvis, and legs.

“Is this how you found her?” I asked the sheriff, ejecting another spent bulb onto the wet earth, where it hissed for a brief moment before going cold and silent.

“No. Her face was in the mud, body twisted clear around. Buttocks almost flat against the ground.”

“Not a comfortable position,” I said, rewinding the first roll of film.

“You’re gonna clean up them bulbs when you’re done, ain’t you, Ellie?” asked the sheriff to needle me.

I nodded yes. “I suppose she was already dead when she hit the ground?”

“Dead before she got here,” clarified the doctor.

“What’s the nearest road? Forty?”

“Route Forty’s about two hundred yards back that way,” said the sheriff, throwing a thumb over his shoulder. Then pointing past me, “There’s a service road to the water tower about fifty yards over there.”

“Paved?”

“Just mud.” He squinted at the moon then nudged the wet ground with his toe.

“Are your boys checking for tracks over there?” I asked, loading the second roll.

He glared at me. “You want this job, Eleonora?”

“Take it easy, Frank,” I said. “It’s for my story.”

Olney stared me down for a moment, hands on wide hips. It must have made him feel tough to push a girl around. A girl just trying to do her job. Then he lit a cigarette and took a deep draw.

“Halvey and Pulaski are over there now, looking for tracks,” he said. “Why don’t you see if there’s anything worth shooting when you’re done here?”

“Almost finished. I just want to get some tight shots of her neck.”

“She ain’t in no rush,” he mumbled. “But remember, the paper doesn’t use any of these. They’re for my investigation. And black and white. I ain’t paying for Kodachrome.”

“I’ll bill you for film and processing,” I said, returning to the body. “And bulbs . . .”

Jordan Shaw’s hair was matted with mud and wet leaves, making it impossible to tell if she’d been clubbed on the head. Peruso would know better in the morning. Her face showed no contusions or abrasions. The neck appeared to have been snapped neatly, with no sign of trauma anywhere on the skin, if you didn’t count the gash in her pelvis. But that hadn’t killed her. I finished off the second roll with some wide shots of the crime scene, picked up my exploded flashbulbs, then set off in search of Halvey and Pulaski.

I tramped through the woods toward the service road, wondering if I was following the murderer’s route. The ground was saturated from the previous night’s rainstorm, and the soggy earth tried to suck the shoes right off my feet. I wished I’d worn boots; my heels were ruined. If anyone had left Wentworth’s Woods on foot the night before, there would surely be tracks left behind.

“Jesus, Ellie!” cried Halvey. “You scared the hell out of me. Make some noise when you sneak up on a guy!” He put a hand on his heart and took a seat on a dead log.

I snapped a picture of the distressed deputy, blinding him for about ten seconds with the flash. “Check the bulletin board at the jail on Monday,” I said.

Once he’d regained his sight, he leapt from his log and snatched the camera from my hands.

“I’m confiscating this film,” he grinned.

“I’ve got shots of the body on that roll, you big bully,” I lied. “Olney’ll have your head.”

Halvey frowned and gave me back the camera. “What are you doing over here anyway?”

“Frank sent me to take some pictures of tracks. Found any?”

“Just this mess here,” he said, pointing to the deep ruts that cut through the middle of the road. “And those have been there for years.”

“Where’s Stan?”

“I don’t know. The Polack’s poking around somewhere. You go look for him; I’m beat.”

I walked about a hundred yards in each direction, searching the ground with the flashlight Halvey had given me. I passed Stan Pulaski going and coming as he knelt in the mud to examine the ground. He said he was looking for tire tracks. The ruts seemed as old as the water tower itself, and I could find no evidence of footprints.

“Where does Judge Shaw live?” I asked Pat Halvey once I’d returned to the log.

“Market Hill,” he said. “Big old mansion in the nice part of town.”

“Any houses around here?”

“Nope. The Mohawk Motel’s about a mile up Route Forty, and the Dew Drop Inn’s just over there.” He pointed through the woods.

“What do you make of all this, Pat?” I asked.

The deputy’s eyes narrowed. “Something dirty, Ellie,” he said. “Nice, pretty girl like that turns up dead, bare naked. I think she was raped and killed by a sexual pervert.”

I murmured agreement as I snapped a few shots of the mud. Pat Halvey was the kind of fellow who would notice a puddle on the ground in the morning and deduce that it had rained the night before.

“Jordan Shaw was a nice girl?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Homecoming Queen her junior year.”

“You knew her?”

“No, but you know how it is. Everyone kind of knows everyone else around here. At least by name.”

Sheriff Olney and Doc Peruso were huddled over two cups of coffee from a thermos bottle, their hot breath puffing billows into the wet air. The body had been wrapped into a big, old Packard Henney ambulance and carted away to New Holland City Hospital on Franklin Avenue, where Peruso would spend a busy Sunday morning on the postmortem. Police officers were now combing the area, scanning the muddy landscape with bowed heads and long, black flashlights.

“Find anything?” Olney asked when he saw me approach.

“Nope. Scared the life out of Halvey, though.”

The sheriff muttered something under his breath and took a sip of cooling coffee.

“So what do you think, Frank?” I asked. “What happened here?”

“Goddamn it, Ellie,” he said, pitching the dregs of his coffee onto the muddy ground. “I got here an hour ago, and you expect an arrest?”

“I’m just asking where the investigation stands. I’ve got my job to do, too.”

“I’m waiting for the coroner’s report,” he said, tossing his head in Peruso’s direction. “Then I’ll consider the physical evidence and go from there.”

“
Is
there any physical evidence?” I asked. “Besides the body, I mean.”

Olney glowered at his feet. “No. No tracks; nothing.”

I nodded and made a mental note for my story. The sheriff took notice, and his face fell flat.

“What are you planning to write anyway, Ellie?”

“You haven’t told me anything,” I said. “Our next edition won’t be out until Monday noon. I’m hoping you’ll get something more by tomorrow night.”

“I’ll get the bastard who did this,” he said, glaring at me. “You can put that in your damn story.”

Olney trudged off to confer with the troopers and his deputies, leaving me and Doc Peruso behind.

“Would you mind giving me some information tomorrow once you’ve examined the body?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said. “I should be finished around eleven.”

“In the meantime, how about I buy you a coffee in a proper cup?”

Whitey’s Luncheonette on East Main was crowded as usual for a Saturday night. The richer kids were home from college for the holiday, and the poorer kids were always around. Whitey’s was a renowned late-night hangout for young and old, and it was busy even on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Whitey Louis kicked some dawdling teenagers out of a booth and ushered us over personally. I thought this singular behavior, since the proprietor was a royal prick who rarely budged from his seat at the cash register, and even then only to call his bookie.

“Why the first-class treatment, Whitey?” asked Doc Peruso. “You need some free medical advice?”

Whitey laughed, took a seat with us—another first—and summoned Carmella, a slim waitress of a certain age, whose jet-black beehive belied the years she’d clocked on her odometer. Peruso eschewed his pipe and lit a green cigar instead. We ordered coffee. Whitey told Carmella to bring a large order of fries and gravy, and Peruso and I shrugged at each other. Tony Di Gregorio, the fruit wholesaler on West Main, once told me Whitey Louis was cheaper than a Scottish Jew living in Genoa. Italian humor, I gathered, my feelings none too hurt.

“I hear something happened up on Route Forty,” Whitey said. Peruso and I exchanged glances.

“Maybe,” I said, toying with one of the spoons on the table; Fred Peruso had to be more diplomatic than I did.

“Come on,” said Whitey, lowering his voice as I lit a cigarette. “I hear someone was murdered. Ten minutes later, the coroner and Lois Lane stroll into my diner arm in arm. You two were out there, right? So what’s the story?”

“Read the papers, Whitey,” I said, payback for the Lois Lane crack.

“Come on, girlie. There ain’t no paper tomorrow. Just give me a hint. I won’t breathe a word to nobody.”

“To tell you the truth, Frank Olney asked us to keep quiet until tomorrow.”

“Screw him, the fat slob. I know something happened out there, so why don’t you just tell me?”

Carmella returned with the coffee.

“Sorry, Whitey,” I said, feeling a sudden chill from our host.

“Thanks loads,” he said, rising from the booth. “Don’t take too long; I got paying customers who want to sit down.”

Whitey returned to his register, pausing at the kitchen window on the way to cancel our fries and gravy.

“I was wondering, Doctor, does Judge Shaw have any enemies?” I asked Peruso once we were alone.

“Call me Fred, will you?” he said. “You make me feel like an old man.”

“Freddy sounds even younger,” I smiled. Flirting is a habit of mine that I can’t quite control.

“Fred is young enough, thanks. And, by the way, Eleonora doesn’t exactly scream youth.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll call you Fred if you’ll call me Ellie.”

“Deal. Now, what was the question again?”

“Do you think the judge has enemies?”

Peruso shrugged and sipped his coffee.

“That wasn’t the judge under that sheet,” he said.

“You think a twenty-one-year-old girl has that kind of enemies?”

“I think a pretty girl like Jordan gave fellows ideas. Maybe one of them didn’t want to take no for an answer.”

I stubbed out my cigarette in the tin ashtray.