THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE (41 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

“YOU SHOULD HAVE
said,” Sara Pridmore complained, more hurt than angry.

“I didn’t think it was necessary.”

“Necessary?” Sara said, propping herself on an elbow so the bed sheet fell from her shoulder to her breast. “
Necessary
? Is that how you feel? That we share with each other from need, not from want?” Sara looked away, returning to her back to stare at the ceiling. She had pulled her hair from her forehead and off her face in a way that made her look much younger than she was. “I’m sorry you consider me such an obligation.”

“You’re blowing this out of proportion, Sara, twisting it the wrong way,” said Cassie McMaster. She, too, had been lying naked on her back, bare breasts exposed above the linen bed sheet, staring idly at her own blank spot on the ceiling. She now turned to face Sara. “It’s not something you talk about. It’s not something you admit to friends.” Sensing Sara bristle, she added, “Or lovers.” She was close enough to smell the sweetness of Sara’s breath. As if to prove her point, Cassie looked away before saying, “It’s not something you brag on, like winning the lottery, that your half-sister also happens to be your niece.”

Sara had arrived home shortly before midnight, after driving straight through to Church Falls from New York City, stopping only for coffee and to pee. What she had considered the single most significant lead in the investigation into the killing of Missy Bitson—namely, the discovery of Jordy Bitson’s DNA in the alley where the victim’s body was discovered and Missy’s DNA on the bed sheets where Jordy slept—had been swept from her practical mind by the matter-of-fact disclosure of Evelyn Bitson that her
grandfather
, Leland McMaster Senior, was actually her biological dad.

Sara had struggled to remain standing, even as she had asked Evelyn dumbly, “So, who is your mother?” Owing to the resemblance between the two, at first, Sara feared it might be Cassie. When Evelyn said Maggie, Sara was somehow relieved, and at the same time appalled.

Immediately on her return, Sara showered, standing under the steaming water until her skin glowed pink, in the hope she might scrape the road grit from her body and the spiritual grime from her soul. Afterward, though her skin was clean, Sara felt her thoughts were still dirty. She telephoned Cassie McMaster, who arrived shortly after.

Sara wished she could, but knew she wouldn’t be able to let the issue go. Clearly, in Church Falls, the bloodlines did run deep.

“After Missy was killed, you didn’t think it might be relevant?” asked Sara.

“How? How
could
it be? My father is seventy-six-years-old, Sara: old, old,
old
—an old man. He rarely leaves the property except to work. Even to buy groceries. They have what they need delivered; he has his horses, he has his cars. My mother? She has”—Cassie paused, wondering what exactly it was her mother might have—“her memories, I suppose.”

Sara said, “Such
memories
they must be.”

“At first, my parents weren’t allowed by Maggie to be alone with Missy,” Cassie continued. “By the time she turned nine, Maggie wouldn’t let them see Missy at all, as if it were some arbitrary age beyond which my father couldn’t be trusted. My mother begged me to speak with her, to ask Maggie to change her mind.
For your father’s sake
, she said. When I told this to Maggie, she laughed, as if the notion was absurd.”

“Even if he hadn’t seen her for years,” said Sara, referring to Leland McMaster, “he would know her. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to pick Missy out in a crowd, to follow her to and from school. He could have stalked her,” she ventured.

“Don’t be melodramatic,” Cassie said, running her fingers through her dark hair. “He wouldn’t.”

Outside, the wind howled against the windowpane, rattling the glass and shaking the frame. They each had consumed half the bottle of red wine Cassie brought with her when she arrived, even though it was late and in the morning Sara, if not both, would suffer a hangover. Sara didn’t drink alcohol, only in the company of Cassie, though in fairness when they were together, they didn’t always drink. Sara wondered, “Is this the courage she requires to be with me?” But she did not ask. Not that she was frightened of the question, only the reply.

The relationship began nine months ago, by accident. Sara was never certain who had seduced whom.

She had been on routine patrol and noticed a disturbance beneath a lighted window at the rectory of the Episcopal Church, a faint shadow passing through the hedge. If it had been anything at all, it was nothing by the time Sara arrived. She conducted a cursory check of the surroundings, walking the full perimeter of the property until she again was standing by the lighted window. Without meaning to, Sara looked up. There, through the window, she observed Cassie McMaster stepping from her vestments and throwing a heavy, terry towel bathrobe over her naked shoulders. At that point, Sara willed that her feet should return her to her car. Unfortunately, her feet disobeyed. Before Sara could reissue the command, Cassie turned, becoming aware of her presence.

Sara could not depart without an explanation. She knocked on the heavy wood door of the rectory. Cassie answered and they talked in the narrow hallway leading to Cassie’s rooms. After her shift that evening, Sara returned. They had been sleeping together ever since, though the relationship hadn’t prompted a return by Sara, to the bosom of the
Church
.

“Did he ever touch
you
?” she asked now.

“Never,” said Cassie. “Never. But I think—without my knowing it at the time—Maggie willingly ran interference.”

“What about afterward, after Maggie was gone? She was only fifteen when she became pregnant with Evelyn. Sixteen when she left. That much I already know. How did you avoid him? You couldn’t have been more than fourteen yourself.”

“I don’t know,” said Cassie. “I was tall, well developed for my age,” she said, caressing a breast. “I suppose I wasn’t his type. He preferred them young.”

She smiled as if it didn’t matter. It had for her at the time, growing up, though if Cassie had known then of her father’s unique way of showing affection for her sister, it wouldn’t have. But as a young girl Cassie had been jealous of the fact her father considered Maggie special. She shivered now, pulling the bed sheet close to her chin.

“When did you know?”

“Maggie confessed. The day she was married. We were upstairs, in her bedroom at home,” Cassie recalled. “She was dressing, pulling on her slip when I saw her tummy and said,
you’re getting fat
. I didn’t know, but she was pregnant and already beginning to show.”

“How did she tell you?” asked Sara.

“She said:
I’m pregnant. It belongs to Dad
. Just like that, as if she were discussing the weather. At first, I had no idea what she was saying, then, seeing her expression, it began to make sense, like something I’d known all along. The separate rooms for my parents from the time we were very young. Late at night, the back and forth between rooms, as if both my father and Maggie were restless, and the nudge-nudge, wink-wink relationship they seemed to enjoy, excluding my mother, my brothers and me. And the bleeding.”

Cassie shuddered. For a moment, Sara thought she might weep. “I was eight years old, maybe, so Maggie couldn’t have been more than ten. Already she was menstruating. She couldn’t confide in my mother could she? For almost a year she suffered, having to make do with toilet paper, Kleenex and rags. It was awful.”

“What did you do?”

“
Me?
I did nothing, what could I do? A teacher at school noticed, gave Maggie pads. Told her what to buy, how to use them and not to come back to school until she figured out how to do both.”

“What happened then?” asked Sara. “The teacher, she didn’t report it to anyone?”

“Not a word. Remember, Sara, it was more than thirty years ago. Even then my father was a big shot, a respected man in this town.”

“And your mother? She didn’t tell your mother?”

Cassie considered her reply. “Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. My mother was—
is
—a drunk. What came first, the alcohol or the abuse?” Cassie shrugged. “I don’t know, Sara. And frankly my dear,” she mimicked, “I don’t give a damn.” Sara studied Cassie as if she wasn’t entirely convinced. “It isn’t that I don’t care,” Cassie relented. “Too much damage has been done not to.” Cassie said it as if it were eating at her now. “It’s just that I’ve come to terms with it. You move on. Perhaps it’s the reason I joined the Church. I wasn’t going to make it on my own. I just knew it. Eventually, my future would be consumed by my past. The Church was my back-up plan.”

“And Maggie?” Sara asked.

“Maggie is Humpty Dumpty, she’s damaged beyond repair. All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Maggie together again.”

“Does she suspect your father of having killed Missy?”

“She may, though she’d need someone to verbalize it for her, to make it real. I’m not about to.”

Sara said, “Jesus, what a happy family.”

“’Happy family is an oxymoron, Sara. In a way, all families are dysfunctional.”

Sara sat upright in bed, hugging her knees to her chest with her arms; she hadn’t sufficient energy—or optimism—to disagree. Cassie was more than fifteen years her senior. Sara wondered:
If I wasn’t lesbian, would I prefer older men to young?
Thinking of Dojcsak and Burke as potential alternatives, Sara decided in her case sexual preference wasn’t about preference at all. In the case of men, was there really any choice?

“What will you do?” Cassie asked.

“I don’t know; I really don’t. I don’t know that it changes anything, just gives us more to think about. To me, Jordy is still our most reasonable suspect. I’ll need to speak to Ed, I suppose. Have him question your dad. Who knows? Your father might turn out to be
our
back-up plan.”

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

EUGENE BITSON AGREED
to meet with Seamus Mcteer for breakfast at the
Big Top Diner
that morning. Had he not done so and decided to remain home instead with his wife, the day may have turned out and ended quite differently. It may not have, but for years thereafter, Eugene Bitson struggled with the uncertainty it might have. (Unlike Sara Pridmore, Eugene
did
allow for a grudging acceptance in the ripple theory of cause and effect.)

He ordered black coffee with two slices of whole-wheat toast; buttered lightly, jam on the side. Despite his height and gaunt frame, Eugene ate sparingly, his diet consisting of one meal in the morning and one in the late afternoon or early evening. Eugene preferred coffee and tobacco to the more conventional food groups. In this, he and Ed Dojcsak were very much alike, though the Sheriff of Warren County carried an additional seventy pounds.

Eugene sipped his coffee, which had grown cold. The crowd of early morning regulars had thinned to only a few retired and unemployed locals with little else to do but sit and speculate. Speculate on how things would be if they had their way, and how they weren’t because they didn’t.

At the counter, complimentary copies of
The Sentinel-Tribune
were offered with coffee. Eugene was relieved, for a change, not to see a picture of either his family or himself on the front page. He shuddered to consider the speculation surrounding him.

Seamus arrived shortly after nine, joining Eugene in a rear booth. Beneath his arm he carried a copy of
The Sentinel-Tribune
. He sat, placing it on the table between them. The waitress arrived with coffee.

“Your treat?” he said, looking to Eugene.

Eugene acknowledged with a nod.

“Of course.” Turning to the waitress, Seamus said, “Eggs over, double sausage, home fries and whole-wheat toast.” She scratched his order on a pad. “And,
dearie
, add a tomato, fried and sliced thin, on the side. Have them sprinkle it with
parmo
cheese.”

Seamus smiled, satisfied with his selection. His belly pressed against the tabletop. In the past two weeks, Seamus had gained weight, perhaps the pounds Maggie Bitson had lost, though this thought never occurred to him.

“You have them?” asked Eugene after Seamus’ breakfast had arrived. He watched as Mcteer splashed ketchup over his home fries and eggs.

“Here,” Seamus replied, patting his chubby palm on the copy of
The Sentinel-Tribune
still resting between them on the table.

“All of them? Negatives and prints?”

Through a mouthful of sausage and fried egg, Seamus said, “Aye, as promised; wha’,
you don’t trust me?
”

Eugene smoked, not caring that the fumes drifted toward Seamus like a cloud.

“How do I know you haven’t kept copies, on your computer?”

Seamus worked his jaws, clamping down on his breakfast with vicious intent. Through a mouth half full he said, “Because it doesn’t behoove me to have pictures of a dead girl on my hard drive, Eugene, ‘specially if the cops come lookin’. All holy hell has broken loose. Have you not been readin’ the papers? If we’re found out, we’re done fer.” Still chewing, he said, “And you?”

Eugene didn’t answer. In response, he opened the lapel of his all weather jacket, revealing an envelope thick—presumably—with cash.

They were silent while Seamus ate and Eugene smoked. The waitress returned to clear plates. She poured more coffee and set the bill on the table between them. Seamus pressed it toward Eugene.

“You’re a practical man, Gene,” he said.

“I have to protect my family,” Eugene replied.

Seamus looked skeptical. “Sure it i’nt yourself your needin’ t’ protect, Gene?”

“We’ve been through this, Seamus. It’s no concern of yours. I’ve agreed to pay. To you,
why
shouldn’t matter.”

“Aye,” said Seamus.

Mcteer grinned. He was a happier man these days since Jordy Bitson had stopped pestering him with nightly telephone calls demanding payment in exchange for his silence. For a while, Seamus believed, truly, that his Scottish goose was cooked: he
and
Jeremy Radigan. They’d paid one installment the previous week, as agreed. Three nights ago the boy telephoned in a panic, demanding the full balance up-front. Seamus had tried but was unable to contact Radigan, to ask his partner what to do. Reluctantly, knowing Radigan’s aversion to such things, Seamus had left a message on Roots’ mobile, detailing their predicament. As Bitson had demanded, Seamus telephoned Jordy that night on the boy’s cell, to explain. No answer. Seamus tried a dozen times more, connecting only to the digital message informing him
the cellular caller you are trying to reach is unavailable
. Inexplicably, he hadn’t heard from Bitson since. But the boy’s call and subsequent
disappearance
had given Seamus ideas of his own, hadn’t it?

“Let’s get on with it then,” he said to Eugene.

“Here?”

“The shop,” Seamus said. “I’ll count my money there.”

Seamus retrieved his newspaper, allowing Eugene to pay. Together they exited onto Main Street toward the
Exxxotica
.

Christopher Burke, who had all this time been waiting patiently outside, followed close behind.