No Stone Unturned (7 page)

It seemed Big Frank was right, but the order of events bothered me. If the evidence had pointed to a struggle, if there had been a scream, I might have believed it was the work of a sadist. But her pelvis had been cut after she was already dead, and a sadist couldn’t get his kicks like that.

“Anything else for me?” asked Olney.

“Just this,” I said with a half-hearted chuckle. “The Mohawk Motel has a Peeping Tom.”

Olney pursed his lips, eyes darting between some invisible foci. I could hear gears churning inside his head.

“There’s a beaten path along the wall behind the motel,” I continued, thinking about my own visits to the Mohawk. “It looks like it’s been in use for a while.” God, when had I last spent an afternoon there?

“Any idea who?” asked Frank, almost licking his chops. He could taste an arrest.

“Yes, but I wouldn’t like to say. It’s just a hunch, and I don’t think he’s our man, anyhow. The voyeur has a good thing going, right? So why now, after all this time, would he decide to snap a girl’s neck and take a gash out of her pelvis?”

“Maybe she caught him looking.” Frank was convinced already.

“You don’t kill for that.”

“You might if you’re a homicidal maniac. Look at Jack the Ripper.”

I didn’t quite get the comparison, but I let it pass.

The sheriff rose from his chair and lumbered across the room to retrieve his red-plaid hunting jacket from the rack. I didn’t need to ask where he was going, and I already regretted having told him.

“I almost forgot,” he said, stuffing his bearish arms into his coat. “Judge Shaw wants to see you tonight. About six.”

“What?” I asked, a little spooked. “What’s he want from me?”

“He thinks the paper might help find this killer. He wants you to know what he knows. Do me a favor, Ellie, and drop by his house around six.”

“What about George Walsh?” I asked. “Why don’t you ask him to go?”

Frank Olney stopped at the door and stared back at me across the room. He raised his hat to his head and yanked it on tight. “He asked for you by name.”

Great.

“By the way,” he said, smiling, “good one about George and the Lindbergh baby.”

Back at my place on Lincoln Avenue, I went to work on my story for the next edition. “L
OCAL
G
IRL
F
OUND
M
URDERED
,” I led. I had a jump on my competition and was confident I would score my first big story. Charlie Reese had tried to temper my expectations when I’d begged him for the assignment. I knew my best chance to get the byline was to write a better story than Georgie Porgie. That much, at least, I knew I could do.

My father was not far from my thoughts. He had never approved of my choice of career, and he considered New Holland an inbred hick town, undeserving of his child. His only surviving child. How I had longed to prove him wrong, serve him a helping of humble pie with a shovel, and watch him admit grudgingly that I hadn’t failed him. It was an all-consuming desire that I had chronicled in a journal, pursued with vigor and singularity of purpose. Then, with the passing of the months, anesthetized by obscene quantities of whiskey and bad behavior, I had somehow lost the impetus and put the journal aside. The lack of urgency, the slow pace of life, the absence of intellectual challenge had lulled me into a personal and professional slumber. I squandered my days and wasted my nights in trifling pursuits, meaningless, passing diversions. And then my father died in January, leaving me no opportunity either to sweep up the shards of our shattered relationship or to salvage his respect. I wondered if it mattered now that he was gone, if I still had a chance at ultimate success and redemption in my own mind. If not, then what was there to do but drown myself outright, dissolute, in a pool of whiskey and decadence?

That’s what I thought in my darker, drunker moments. But somehow, when the sun rises and the day calls, you answer the alarm and go on. Something beckons: a cup of coffee, a football game, a chat with Fadge. Or a murder. Each new day is a chance to reinvent yourself, after all.

None of the regional papers—not the
Albany Times-Union
, the
Knickerbocker News
, or the
Schenectady Gazette
—had picked up on the story in time for their Sunday-morning editions. But I wasn’t discounting their ability to catch up. And George Walsh was nipping at my heels. My piece was almost complete, lacking only some background on the victim: details about school, her future hopes and dreams, some personal anecdotes. I would get all that and a photograph of her for the front page when I met the judge at six.

I pulled the last page of copy out of the typewriter at half past four. Hoping to catch some of the Giants’ game, I folded my story into my purse and scooted across the street to Fiorello’s. Fadge was alone at the soda fountain, back to the door, eyes fixed on the flickering blue television screen behind the counter. Another quiet Sunday, he told me, typical for November.

“Business stinks after Labor Day,” said the huge man, drawing me a Coke from the fountain. Ron “Fadge” Fiorello was in his late twenties, a few years older than I, but more than twice my size at six foot two and over three hundred pounds.

I asked how the Giants were doing without Gifford, and Fadge cursed Chuck Bednarik.

“They were winning seventeen to nothing, and now it’s twenty-three to seventeen. Shaw keeps throwing it to the other team.” He handed me my drink. “Hey, Ellie, speaking of Shaw, maybe you know something about this,” he said, leaning over the counter. “I heard Judge Shaw’s daughter was killed Friday night. Is that true?”

I took a straw from a nearby dispenser and nodded. Van Brocklin heaved the ball to Ted Dean, who scampered into the end zone to tie the score. Fadge groaned as the point after fluttered through the uprights to give Philadelphia the lead, 24 to 23.

“I was in Wentworth’s Woods last night,” I said. “I saw everything. Even took pictures.”

“So what happened?”

I shrugged. “Nobody knows yet. They just found her murdered, buried in the mud, naked.” I sipped my Coke. “Say, did Jordan Shaw ever hang out around here?”

“Now and then about six years ago,” he said. “She used to go out with Tom Quint. You know Tommy. He worked here before he went to college.”

“Tall? Dark hair? Yeah, I know him.”

“A good kid. He’s at RIT. Probably back in Rochester already, unless he heard the news.”

I asked for Tom’s local number, figuring it was worth a try, and secluded myself in the phone booth to dial. Tom’s mother answered and said he’d taken the morning bus back to Rochester on Sunday. I told her I was a classmate from RIT and needed his dorm-hall number to ask him about a homework assignment. She gave it to me, and I made a note to phone him after my meeting with Judge Shaw.

At six sharp I lifted the heavy, brass knocker and clapped it twice against the door. The evening air was cool, with just a hint of burning firewood floating on the breeze. As I waited for someone to answer the door, I surveyed the surroundings. Tall, green pine trees and bare elms; a manicured lawn; a long, concrete driveway. The gardener had already planted wooden stakes on either side of the drive to guide the plow once the snows started. The house was a spacious redbrick mansion with green shutters and three chimneys. To my right, I noticed a blue Chrysler New Yorker parked in front of the two-door garage. A red-white-and-blue sticker on the rear bumper read “Experienced Leaders—Nixon-Lodge.” Great; maybe we could talk politics. I could tell him how I had canvassed for Kennedy and spent election night celebrating the victory flat on my back with the local Democratic campaign manager.

Almost a minute later, a tall, thin man with graying temples answered the door. He looked like hell, as if he hadn’t slept for two days, as if the world had crashed down on his shoulders. He looked like a man who’d just learned his only daughter had been murdered.

“Miss Stone?” he asked softly. I nodded. “Come in.”

The neat house creaked under the ponderous grief that hung in the air, hushing every room. Clean and ordered, the Shaw residence discouraged the visitor from making himself at home. I followed the judge through the foyer and down a long hallway to his den. Despite efforts to quiet my step, my heels thumped over the carpet runner and the wooden floor underneath, emitting a hollow echo as I went. I felt like a plow horse on a putting green. Once in the study, he offered me a leather armchair.

“Please accept my condolences, sir,” I said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Will you have a drink?” he asked, seemingly unwilling to acknowledge my sympathies.

“Scotch would be nice,” I said, feeling as if I’d asked for the moon.

“You must be wondering why I’ve asked you here,” he said, dropping three ice cubes into a tumbler with a pair of tongs. His voice was a measured baritone, thoughtful and precise. He looked off into the distance for a moment, as if he’d lost his train of thought. “We’ve never met,” he continued, returning to the task at hand. “And I’m not familiar with your work at the paper.”

I just stared at him, wishing I could find something to say.

“I spoke to Fred Peruso this afternoon,” he explained, pouring the Scotch absently. A healthy two fingers. “He spoke highly of you.”

“Dr. Peruso’s very kind.”

The judge handed me my glass, stared at me purposefully for several seconds, as if trying to understand what value Fred could possibly see in me, then turned away. He gazed at a wall of books, lined up from floor to ceiling on mahogany shelves. Law tomes and heavy, leather-bound volumes.

“I think Frank Olney is in over his head,” he continued. “Fred says you’re smart, creative, and tenacious. I have my doubts, of course. You seem rather young, and you’re just a girl, after all.”

“I can’t help my sex,” I said. “If you like, I can go.”

The judge shook his head vaguely and took a seat on the divan. He wasn’t drinking. Then he leaned forward, the muscles in his face gradually tightening beneath the pale skin.

“I need help,” he said in a strangled whisper. “All the help I can get. I want you to find the monster who did this to Jordan.”

“I don’t understand. I’ve never investigated a murder before,” I lied.

“Really?” he blurted out. “What about your father’s? Fred Peruso told me all about it.”

I was stunned. My face surely blanched, and I stammered something inadequate about that being different. Then I took a large swig of Scotch and choked a bit on the first sting.

“I apologize,” he said. “That was wrong of me.”

I tried to compose myself, drew a couple of long breaths through my nose, then sipped my drink. Judge Shaw rose suddenly and crossed the room, stopping above me. He reached down to hand me a handkerchief. I dabbed my eyes, then looked up at him.

“Thank you,” I said, returning the handkerchief. “But my father’s murder is something I prefer not to discuss.”

“And I wish I didn’t need to discuss my daughter’s murder with you. But I do.” He paused and drew a breath. His eyes were bone dry, staring sternly down at me. “I will pay you to find Jordan’s murderer.”

“I’m paid by the paper,” I said. Had he just offered me a bribe?

“Just find him, Miss Stone.” His body shook with a buried rage.

“Yes, sir.” I downed half my drink, then cleared my throat, resolved to see this through. “I’ll have to ask you a few questions. You might know some details that could prove useful.”

He nodded stiffly. “Of course. Go ahead.”

“Did she have a boyfriend?” I asked.

“I don’t know. She always had suitors, if that’s what you mean. Jordan didn’t have to worry about finding a date for Saturday night. But she hadn’t mentioned anyone in particular recently.”

“What about Tom Quint?”

The judge seemed surprised that I knew about Tom. “No, they went steady in high school, but Jordan ended it before she went away to college.”

“Where did she study? Boston, was it?”

“Yes, Tufts.”

“Did she see anyone over the holiday?”

“Tommy called Jordan on Wednesday night,” he said. “But I don’t know if she went out that night. I’m not sure. And I don’t know if they saw each other or not after that.”