THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE (7 page)

“It wasn’t a miracle, Rena, only a lucky guess. One girl loved horses, had been hanging around the paddocks: probably got herself into trouble with a stable boy. Even the newspapers had drawn conclusions of their own. The other was a runaway who was badly decomposed. They suspect a hit and run. Being so close to the roadway, her body was going to be discovered eventually, anyway. Besides, if she’s such a genius, why can’t she say who
killed
the girls? Bodies are the easy part; who, how and why are more challenging.”

“Look, Ed, if it’s your pride, I can speak with her on my own. You don’t have to talk with her yourself.”

“I’ll do this my way, Rena, without interference, in my own time.”

“Will your time be time enough?”

Changing the subject, Dojcsak said, “I’ll see my mother today.”

“Today? You saw her yesterday; have you forgotten? She isn’t getting better, you know.”

Upon learning of Luba’s illness, Ed and Rena had confined Magda Dojcsak to the care of a local nursing home. Dojcsak hadn’t put up much fuss at Rena’s suggestion to move his mother from their home and the second floor bedroom she’d occupied for years. With the necessary gadgetry needed to sustain life—wires, oxygen tanks and tubes—it was no longer practical for Luba to continue to share a room with Rena and Ed. Magda herself hadn’t complained, prepared as always to accept the sacrifice of what she considered her inevitable fate.

“She likes it when I visit.”

“Sure, Ed, like she
knows
it when you visit.”

“Okay;
I
like it when I visit,” he replied.

Of course, Rena thought but didn’t say, it satisfies your sense of obligation. Instead, she asked, “Shall I make you a lunch?”

“No, I’ll eat out. And don’t bother with supper either. I won’t be home.”

“Suit yourself.” Studying her husband’s expression, Rena sighed, stood, and said, “Shave any closer, Ed, you’ll strike bone.”

…

With this thought percolating in his mind, Dojcsak left home, pulling from his driveway and directing his late model Crown Victoria along the River Road toward the center of town.

As expected, the sky had begun to clear, the sun becoming a crescent over the tree line, lacking in warmth but emitting enough light at this hour for Dojcsak to successfully negotiate the strip of asphalt that last evening had caused him such grief.

To his right, the river was flat, a sheet of plate glass with a fine film of mist rising from its surface like Spanish moss. The Hudson was at its widest and deepest at this point, three miles below Church Falls Bluffs, the steep precipice from which the village had taken its name. The dam had been constructed in the forties, in an effort to control the flow of water as it passed through the village. Prior to that, residents and farmers living within the flood plain had been plagued by frequent overflows, the problem often extending into the village where the channel narrowed and the river became a tumultuous sluice. With the building of the dam, property damage had been greatly curtailed, even if the death toll from recreational activities surrounding the waterway each summer continued steadily to rise.

The police building was a two-level field stone structure located on the south side of the river. Constructed in eighteen sixty-two by Dutch immigrants to the region, it was jointly occupied by Dojcsak’s small force and a chapter of the town’s volunteer fire department.

On the first level, the building contained two aging but adequately maintained pumper-trucks, equipped with the appropriate fire-fighting gear. Dojcsak’s office was located on the second level, together with a cubicle shared by Officers Sara Pridmore and Christopher Burke. A third office served as the local police detachment’s center of command.

Dojcsak’s window overlooked the original Town Square, out over an expanse of yellow, still snow-flattened lawn and to the river beyond. The river was swollen now with runoff from the unusually harsh winter. Barely visible through still winter-naked trees was the recently developed town center, a triangle of new construction which included municipal offices, a community theater, and a commercial complex of over a dozen units housing shops, galleries, and a café serving espresso, latte, cappuccino, and various other exotic concoctions for which Dojcsak resented paying four dollars a cup. The local police detachment was scheduled to relocate to the new municipal facility by the end of the year, with Dojcsak’s current workplace converted to a museum.

Initially, Dojcsak had complained to town council over the move, arguing that the cost and nuisance of the relocation was disproportionate to any possible benefit. Mayor Keith Chislett had explained to Dojcsak—as if speaking to a dull child—that as the village was expanding north, so must the hub of government activity. Dojcsak had complained of the price for take-out coffee and the cost of a restaurant meal on the north side of the bridge, to which His Worship the Mayor replied caustically, “If you’re arguing for a raise, Ed, take up a part-time job. The museum will be looking to hire wardens. With your experience, it should be no problem to qualify.” It was well known that Dojcsak and Chislett did not get along.

In the office, the command center was presided over by Dorothy O’Rielly. Dorothy was a five-foot tall ball of tightly compressed energy, the human equivalent of Indian rubber. Possessed of the vigor of a hound, properly channeled, her intensity could be set to useful purpose. Misdirected, her zeal turned caustic, taking on a stridency that had the power to bruise. Though Dojcsak was grateful for the selflessness with which she contributed unasked to Luba’s convalescence, one evening a week and every second Sunday providing Rena respite from the unremitting burden of his youngest daughter’s care, toward him, she made no effort to conceal an observation that he was himself not up to the obligation.

Dojcsak hauled his bulk the seventeen steps from first floor to second, along the narrow corridor to the makeshift dormitory where coffee, artificial whitener, paper filters, and the ten-cup coffee maker were kept. His stomach bubbled, cursing him for three cups at the crime scene, two cups at home and cautioning him against the dozen more to come. Dojcsak ignored the threat.

Christopher Burke lay atop the sofa. Obviously, he had not returned home since parting with Dojcsak and Sara three hours earlier in the alley where the body had been discovered. The steady rise and fall of his broad chest and the shallow inhale and exhale of his breath indicated to Dojcsak his Deputy was still deep in sleep.

Burke’s face was overcast, shadowed with beard, his dark hair pulled tight in curly knots around his square jaw and flat cheeks. If Dojcsak begrudged Burke anything, he sometimes begrudged him his good looks, jealous of the injustice that concentrates in some people all the best ones. Burke had the frigid appeal of a Greek God, Dojcsak thought, observing the younger man more closely. It was no wonder to the senior officer that women were attracted to him.

As a young man girls hadn’t much liked Ed Dojcsak. In fairness, he supposed he hadn’t much liked them. As a child, Ed learned they could be cruel. Dojcsak’s height hadn’t caught up to his weight until he was in high school. Up to then, he’d paid a terrible price: humiliation bordering on despair. Afterward, it was a skin condition. By the time Ed Dojcsak could appreciate himself for the good-looking young man he was, it was too late for any chance at self-confidence or esteem, though at nineteen a new position with the police went a significant distance toward redressing the oversight.

Dojcsak did not imagine Christopher Burke to have ever had the same problems.

“Wake up, sunshine,” he said to Burke now, nudging the younger man. “Rise and shine.” He said it more urgently, fearing Burke might sleep the long day away. (And who could blame him, knowing as he probably did the hours before them held only grief, recrimination and despair?) Burke stirred. Dojcsak said, “You haven’t been home.”

“And they say you’re no Colombo,” Burke said without malice, his bunched knuckles busily wiping the sleep from his eyes.

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. It’s morning. Duty calls. Shower and shave, I’ll make coffee. We have a long day ahead of us.”

Burke stretched his long body, reached for his jacket and extracted a cigarette from a half empty pack. He ignited the tip with a disposable lighter and momentarily contemplated the flame.

Inhaling deeply, he said, “Where’s Sara?”

“Not here,” Dojcsak replied as if it should be obvious.

“So, what’s the plan, my man?”

Dojcsak shrugged. “We do our duty; we investigate the crime.” He spread coffee from a pre-measured packet to cover the filter he’d carefully placed in the basket of the coffee maker.

“You’re not an experienced investigator, Ed; might be easier said than done.”

Dismissing Burke’s skepticism, Dojcsak replied, “Our only responsibility is to the victim; to assemble facts and to determine motive, opportunity and means. That’s simple enough. How the State—or the good Lord for that matter—interpret and apply the evidence we collect is a matter for their conscience, not ours.”

Unconvinced, Burke replied, “Haven’t got much to go on.”

“It’s a small town, Christopher. How many child killers can there possibly be?”

Burke agreed. Through a cloud of smoke he quoted Seamus Mcteer: “The possibilities
are
limited.”

Coffee was ready. Dojcsak extracted two large mugs from an overhead cupboard, pouring for both Burke and himself. Burke ignited a second cigarette from the remains of the first.

“You said last night you joined the police to be a policeman. Here’s your chance. Be a policeman. If you’re concerned with the larger issues, you should have studied law.”

“It’s not the larger issues keeping me up at night, Ed, it’s my wife, and not in a way I appreciate. In another two months,” he lamented, “it will be the kid.”

With an audible sigh, Dojcsak said, “I’m not an experienced investigator Christopher, but I do know that in a murder investigation the evidence that results in the apprehension and conviction of a suspect is usually gathered within the first twenty-four hours of the crime.”

“
CSI?
” Burke asked.

“
Colombo
,” Dojcsak said, eyeing a wall-mounted clock, “and in the case of Missy Bitson, we’ve squandered half our opportunity already.”

Needing no further encouragement, Burke scrambled from the cot. Without thanking Dojcsak for coffee, he made for the bathroom to shower and to shave.

…

Dojcsak sat erect, back stiff in the functional but uncomfortable wood chair behind his desk, coffee mug in one large fist, telephone receiver in the other, cigarette burning from tobacco to ash in the ceramic ashtray by his elbow. The ashtray had been a gift from his daughter, Jenny, inscribed with her initials and the greeting, “Merry Christmas Daddy, 1990”, her fourth and perhaps—to the girl—final happy Christmas. Shortly thereafter, Luba had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, the parent’s reinforced devotion to the youngest child cheating the eldest of what consideration they had to spare.

For Edward and Rena Dojcsak, Luba’s illness had devoured Jenny’s brilliance as a black hole might a star.

Sunlight filtered like yellow ribbon through the smudged glass panel of the six-pane window. Airborne particles of dust and debris wandered restlessly in and out of the shaft, invisible one moment; exposed like guilty schoolchildren the next. The sun glittered from the glazed surface of the colorful ashtray. Intended originally as a candy dish but Dojcsak partial to tobacco rather than to sweets, he ultimately utilized the memento as a receptacle to accommodate his most filthy habit. On her rare and infrequent visits to the station, Jenny said nothing to discourage her father’s ill-considered treatment of the keepsake, but her expression on seeing it for the first time being used this way suggested she thought it lamentable.

The air was heavy in the small office, musty and close like the smell of old socks; too early in the season yet to open windows and to take advantage of the refreshing and premature spring breeze? With the boiler conspiring mysteriously with an imperfect thermostat to belch out great gusts of converted natural gas, the heat in the second story room was, for Dojcsak, intolerable. He drank water from a cooler, two glasses, hoping to slake his thirst.

Three minutes after placing his first call of the morning, Dojcsak was connected to District Attorney Jimmy Cromwell, the man ultimately responsible for determining the disposition of the Missy Bitson investigation. He offered his condolences.

“I know it’s a small town, Ed. You have my sympathies.” Dojcsak thanked him. “You also have my support. There’s no reason for me to believe you won’t do a thorough job or to call in the BCI,” he said, officially handing off the case to Dojcsak rather than the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation.