The Church of Dead Girls (38 page)

Franklin denied he was endangering Sadie. Donald said that he was using her as bait to catch the person responsible so he could scoop the other papers and the TV reporters. Franklin and Donald traded rather harsh words before Frieda Kraus told them they were behaving like children. At that moment, Mike Shiller rushed into the office to announce that Karla's clothes had been returned and that Captain Percy meant to administer a lie detector test to everyone in Aurelius. That caused quite a sensation. In any case, by that night a Friends' car was parked in front of Franklin's house on Van Buren Street, along with a police car.

One thinks of the application of pressure. A person acts because something forces him to act. But is it one thing or the accumulation of many things? A few people were upset at the thought they would have to undergo a lie detector test. Harry Martini said he would resign before taking such a test. He even contacted the ACLU. Like me, most people had only the vaguest idea about a polygraph test and some imagined it to be like a truth serum that would force them to blurt out their sins going back to farthest childhood. And the threat of a test must have put extra pressure on the person responsible for the abductions. He must have wondered if he could avoid such a test; or, if he had to take it, whether he would fail.

It was during this period when our blindness was most profound that Aaron moved his private inquiry decisively forward. This was partly because of what he had learned from Barry but also because he felt that Sadie was in danger. Soon after Karla's clothes were discovered on Wednesday, Aaron obtained the hands of half a dozen mannequins from the JC Penney in Utica. He put each hand in a shoe box on a cushion of red cloth. In the palms he placed photographs of his mother and on the backs he wrote, “With love, Janice.” On top of the hands he laid a sheet of pink tissue paper. Then he wrapped the shoe boxes with red paper and tied them with red ribbon. He got Harriet and Barry to deliver them. It seemed fitting that the job be done by the remnants of Inquiries into the Right. One box was delivered to Paul Leimbach's office, the second to Malloy's Pharmacy, the third to Dr. Malloy's office, the fourth to Ryan Tavich at the police station, the fifth to Sherman Carpenter at the college, and the sixth to Henry Swazey, who had been Patrick McNeal's lawyer and one of Janice's lovers. Ryan was the only one to receive the shoe box in person.

“What is this?” he asked Barry.

“I don't know,” said Barry, blushing. He started to leave.

“Wait,” said Ryan, “you don't go till I know what it is.”

He opened the box and lifted out the layer of pink paper, revealing Janice's photograph and the hand.

“Jesus,” he said.

“Can I go now?” asked Barry.

“Who told you to deliver this?”

“I'm not at liberty to say.”

Ryan called to Chuck Hawley. “Lock this kid up. A week in jail will help his head.”

Barry told. “It was Aaron,” he said. “Aaron made me do it.”

Ryan was so surprised that he let Barry go without learning if other people had received boxes.

“That's why he told her to fuck me,” he said out loud.

Chuck Hawley thought he had misheard. “Huh?” he said.

Ryan didn't answer. He thought how Harriet had gone out with him simply to ask about Janice. “His soldier,” said Ryan.

Leaving the police station, Barry dropped off the second box at Dr. Malloy's office. The doctor was not in and Barry was glad not to have to give it to him in person. The third box he left with the history department secretary at the college.

Leimbach's accounting office was being run by his partner, Frank Kanter, while Leimbach took a leave of absence. He told Harriet that he'd call Leimbach and say that he had a package.

“A gift, right?” said Frank.

“Sort of,” said Harriet.

She delivered Henry Swazey's box to his office on Main Street, giving it to his secretary. She had dated him, just as she had dated Sherman Carpenter and Ryan, so she was happy not to see him in person.

Mildred Porter was in the pharmacy when Harriet dropped off the last package. Mrs. Porter said that Donald would be in around six to fill prescriptions.

The next day Mrs. Porter told Franklin what happened.

“I gave him the package when he came in and I told him who had delivered it. He was in a hurry, but he took it back behind the counter. He asked me if it was important. I said I knew nothing about it. His back was to me. When he opened the box, his whole body stiffened. Then he shut the box and ran out of the pharmacy, taking the box with him.”

At seven o'clock Roy Hanna, who was on duty in the police station, received a call from a man who refused to identify himself. “Paul Leimbach killed those girls,” said the caller. Then he hung up. Aurelius had no 911 system and there was no way to trace the call. Roy immediately notified Chief Schmidt. Similar calls were received at the sheriff's department in Potterville and at the state police barracks. Captain Percy was with Dr. Malloy at Mallow's house. When the phone rang, Sharon's older brother Frank answered it. “What?” he said. “What?”

He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Someone says Uncle Paul killed Sharon and the other girls,” he told his father.

Captain Percy took the phone but the line was dead. “Was it a man or a woman?”

“A man.”

“Did you recognize the voice?”

“It was muffled. It didn't sound like anyone.”

A similar call was received by the Friends of Sharon Malloy. Leimbach wasn't in the office. Sandra Petoski reported the call to the police. She also called her co-chairman, Rolf Porter, at his real estate office and he said he would be right over. A little later, when Donald Malloy came into the office, he told Sandra to call in more of the volunteers. He asked about Leimbach's whereabouts. Sandra didn't know.

“We've got to find him,” said Donald. The phone was ringing and more people kept coming into the storefront. It was cold with the door open and people tracked in slush from the sidewalk. Cars were honking on the street.

Donald's overcoat was open and Mrs. Petoski saw that he had a pistol stuck in his belt.

“Something's going on,” said Donald. “Sadie Moore might be in danger.”

Mike Shiller came into the office with several other men.

Donald gave Shiller the cardboard box with the hand. “Look what one of those Marxist kids dropped off for me.”

Shiller opened the box. “Jesus,” he said.

“Go find out what they're up to.”

“What the hell,” said Shiller. He called out to two other men. “Let's go,” he said.

Franklin was at the
Independent.
Around eight o'clock Sandra Petoski called him from the Friends' office to tell him about the calls concerning Leimbach. “People are terribly upset and Donald was saying something about Sadie.”

Franklin left the office immediately.

About this same time three men came to Barry's house. Mrs. Sanders recognized them as members of the Friends. She told them that Barry wasn't there. The men—one of them was Mike Shiller—ignored her, entered the house, and searched for Barry. Mrs. Sanders said, “I hope you realize that you're breaking the law.”

“That's what you think,” said Shiller. Mrs. Sanders called the police station but the line was busy. Once Shiller was satisfied that Barry wasn't in the house, he and the others left.

Harriet's neighbors said three men came looking for Harriet as well. Perhaps they were the same ones. Harriet wasn't home. The three men knocked, and one put his shoulder against the door.

The student who lived next door said, “I think he would have busted it if I hadn't come out into the hall. They asked who I was and took my name.”

S
adie was at home with Paula. Because of Sadie's dislike for her new stepmother, she was spending an increasing amount of time in her bedroom. She had a small stereo and was listening to a group called the Indigo Girls. Too loud, Paula thought, but she chose not to complain. Paula was in the living room trying to read. Shortly before eight o'clock, there was a hammering on the door. Paula went to the door and opened it a crack. It was Donald Malloy. He wore a heavy overcoat and tweed cap.

“Sadie may be in danger,” he said. “I need to come in.”

“You can't come in,” said Paula. She saw other men out in the street, perhaps six of them. The police car was still parked at the curb but it appeared to be empty. An hour earlier, Aaron had called her and told her about delivering the six hands. As a result, she was suspicious of Donald, even scared.

“Is she in the house?” asked Donald.

Paula began to shut the door but Donald pushed against it from the other side, shoving Paula back into the hall. Two men followed Donald into the house.

“Get out,” said Paula. “You can't come in here.”

“This is for her own good,” said one of the other men.

“Have you seen Paul Leimbach?” asked Donald.

“I haven't seen anyone. Now get out.” She tried to block their way, standing between them and the living room. They had left the door open and she could hear shouting out on the street.

“Where's Sadie?” asked Donald.

“She's in her room.”

“See if she's there.”

“Of course she's there. Get out of this house!” By now Paula was frightened.

“I want to see,” said Donald.

Paula walked quickly to Sadie's room and knocked. There was no answer. The music was still playing. She turned the handle. It was locked. Donald pushed past her. Paula saw a pistol in his hand.

“Leave her alone!” said Paula. “She's angry at me, that's why she won't open the door.”

“What did she do with the hand that was found on the porch?”

Paula said later that Donald's eyes looked oversized, with a line of white beneath the iris. “The police took it.”

“You're lying.”

“What in the world's wrong with you?”

“Sadie's in danger. I must see her.”

Donald tried the handle, rattling it. Then he stepped back and hit the door hard with his shoulder. The door slammed open with a crash. Donald ran into Sadie's bedroom. The window was open and Sadie was gone.

It was at this point that Franklin ran into his house to find his daughter missing.

Two pairs of footprints led from the window through the snow in the backyard. The small pair must have been Sadie's. The other pair was at least size ten and plainly a man's: a pair of Timberland boots. About twenty feet from the house, Sadie's footsteps stopped, as if the man had picked her up and carried her. At the sidewalk, the prints merged with others and became lost, although there was enough to show that they led west away from downtown. The policeman from the cruiser came hurrying down the block with a coffee mug and told Donald and the others to get away from the prints.

Within a few minutes three more police cars arrived at Franklin's house with their sirens going full blast. From my front porch I watched the men jump from their cars and run through the snow. Ryan was among them. I quickly got my coat from the hall closet.

Donald Malloy kept asking Paula, “Who could have taken her?”

She stood at the curb and stared up the street. She was frantic and refused to go inside, even though she didn't have a jacket. “I heard nothing,” she kept saying. “Nothing at all.”

Franklin wanted to be pointed in a direction and given the chance to hunt for his daughter. He turned to Paula, then walked into the street and looked around him. He kept taking off his hat and pushing one hand through his hair. He looked as if he'd been betrayed, as if some awful mischief had occurred of which he had no comprehension. More people came running up to the house. Ryan Tavich was talking to the state police on the radio. Sirens could be heard in the distance. It was incredible that two girls had disappeared in three days. I got a coat from my house and gave it to Paula. The thought that something awful had happened to Sadie filled me with horror.

Donald Malloy was equally frantic. He kept running back and forth from the house to the sidewalk. He had gotten a flat attaché case from his car and he carried it with him. With his overcoat and hat, he seemed late for a business appointment.

“It's not right that she's gone,” he repeated.

People were saying all sorts of things, so there seemed nothing unusual about his words. Police cars kept arriving and driving away. The night was getting colder and the wind blew snow across the yards.

Abruptly Franklin screamed out, “Where is she?” Paula ran to him and the two of them stood in his snowy yard, holding each other. No one approached them.

At that moment, a maroon Chevrolet pickup pulled up to the curb. It was Dr. Malloy. He had picked up the police calls on his scanner. Without turning off the engine, he jumped from the cab. He looked around, then ran to his brother. He seemed to have only the slightest interest in what was happening and whatever might be wrong with Franklin.

The doctor grabbed the lapel of Donald's overcoat with one hand. They stood on the sidewalk. “Why do you keep accusing Paul?” the doctor shouted. “What do you know?”

I was about ten feet away. Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about but I was struck by his face, its mixture of incomprehension and anger. Donald's back was to me and his shoulders seemed to get smaller. He was still holding the attaché case. He wore a pair of yellow rubber boots that shone against the snow.

“I'm not doing anything,” said Donald. Other people had stopped to watch. Ryan took a step toward them, then paused.

“You're making people think that Paul took Sharon!” shouted the doctor.

Donald pushed his brother away. “How d'you know he didn't?”

The doctor slipped and regained his balance. “He's your friend! You know he's innocent!”

Donald leaned forward and hissed something at the doctor. I'm sure very few people heard it. “He's a fool,” he said.

At that moment a policeman jumped from his car and came running toward Ryan. “There's a report of a man carrying a girl up the hill at Lincoln Park.”

“Let's go!” someone shouted.

Dr. Malloy looked around him. Surely he had noticed us before, but the fact that something was terribly wrong seemed suddenly to strike him. “What's going on?” he demanded.

“Franklin's daughter is missing,” someone told him.

Donald ran out into the street. “The park!” he shouted. He climbed into a car driven by one of the Friends.

“No, wait!” shouted Ryan. He stood on the sidewalk holding up his arms. Most people didn't pay attention. The Friends, especially, hurried to their cars. Franklin was running up the street. Malloy stood on the sidewalk and stared at his brother. A patrol car spun its tires on the ice, making a high whine.

Donald shouted from the open window of the car. “It's Leimbach! Leimbach's got the girl!”

“No!” shouted Dr. Malloy. He began running toward his pickup truck. Many people were yelling and the sound of all the car engines was like anger or frenzy. Headlights swung across the fronts of the houses and the leafless trees. I stood with Paula as people ran around us in the semidark.

“Wait,” shouted Ryan again. Then he, too, ran toward a car. Soon there was no one left in Franklin's yard. In a few windows I could see faces. The wind blew across the trampled snow.

“Take me there,” Paula said. We hurried toward my car.

At the edge of town, Lincoln Park bordered on about sixty acres of a wooded preserve through which had been cut cross-country ski trails. The police search of the area on Sunday had been done very methodically, with sections cordoned off and combed inch by inch. This Wednesday evening there was no plan. By the time Ryan got to the park dozens of people were running through the snow. Only a few had flashlights. The fact, or supposed fact, that someone had been seen carrying Sadie was enough for them to lose their heads. There had been three calls to the police station, by a woman and two men, each reporting a man carrying a girl. It seemed clear that the man was Paul Leimbach, though I am not sure if people asked themselves why they thought this. They had a passion for wanting to think it was someone specific and Leimbach's name had been given to them. But it was more than that. The name had been given to them by Donald Malloy. And wasn't he in a position to know?

It was said later that over two hundred people, mostly men, searched through the park and adjoining woods. Because of the lack of coordination, because of the shouting and darkness and sense of imminent closure, there were many false alarms, many sightings that were only sightings of one another. Ryan managed to control most of the police and he had lights brought from the highway department. He also sent men to surround the general area, though it was so large—over three hundred acres—that the men were spread ridiculously thin. But he also called for more police and sheriffs deputies. These calls were picked up by people with police scanners, and soon people were driving toward the park from all over town, or at least that was how it seemed. And of course the television stations received word as well. I drove to the park with Paula and parked on Johnson Street. We saw dozens of people on the hillside among the trees. Lights bobbed in the darkness. I kept the car running and the heat on. Paula sat hugging her knees with her feet drawn up on the front seat. She still wore the heavy coat that I had brought for her, a dark overcoat that my father had worn fifty years before. She stared from the window and didn't speak. At times she shivered.

Ryan was doing his best to coordinate efforts and had set up a command post at a corner of the park at Johnson and Walnut. He was skeptical about the sightings of a man carrying a girl up the hill and he was skeptical about the footprints leading from Sadie's window. Why would she have walked? Why hadn't she cried out? But for now there was no way to pursue those questions. The search had been taken out of his hands. He did, however, send a policeman to Aaron's apartment.

It seemed to Ryan that he heard shouts coming from fifty directions. And there were bouncing lights and vague shapes. Then, shockingly, he heard a pistol shot. He sent several policemen to investigate, then called the rescue squad for an ambulance. The fact that ten hours of darkness stretched ahead was frightening, and Ryan ordered two men—not police officers—to build a fire so that people could warm themselves. When he heard two more shots, he began sprinting up the hill.

—

Franklin had run to the park on his own. It was four blocks from his house. He had a flashlight and he scrambled up the hill, sliding in the snow, falling, then getting to his feet again. Because of the shouting, he thought Sadie had been found and he ran toward wherever he heard noise. In this way, he found himself moving deeper into the park. There was noise ahead of him and noise behind. People ran past but no one knew anything or they would say something like, “She was seen over there!” Two men told him that Leimbach had been spotted. Franklin was wearing low hiking boots and snow got inside them. At some point his Irish fisherman's hat was snatched away by a branch. His British scarf caught on things. He kept slipping and tumbling in the snow, which in places was over a foot deep. If he couldn't find Sadie, then he wanted to run until he passed out. And when he fell and hurt himself, even the pain felt good to him, as if it was proof of something: the purity of his wishes, the intensity of his effort. Far better to push himself, to run as fast as he could, to fill his brain with physical exertion, than to have thoughts that led to no place except regret.

Franklin was past the top of the hill and had entered the wooded area where there was more shouting. The branches kept cutting his face. He called his daughter's name but there was no answer. The snow wasn't as deep between the trees but there were branches and fallen logs. He kept an arm up to protect his face. At one point he yanked off his scarf and threw it away. He could see nothing but the beam of his light bouncing along in front of him. When his foot caught between two fallen branches and he was thrown forward it felt as if someone had grabbed his right ankle. He fell over a log and toppled heavily into the snow, dropping his light. Snow got under his shirt and down his back. The pain in his ankle was like a bright glare. He lay in the snow breathing hard and feeling nauseated. Then he retrieved his light and tried getting to his feet. Right away he fell again—his ankle wouldn't take his weight. It felt as it had when he'd sprained it in a basketball game a few years before. He was sick in his stomach and there were lights before his eyes. He lay in the snow and slowly straightened his leg. Getting to his feet again, Franklin pulled himself up by a branch and stood on his left leg. He was angry at everything—the snow, his boots, himself. The pain in his ankle was like pain he deserved. He tried to put weight on the ankle but it hurt too much and wouldn't support him. He hung on to the tree and tried not to drop the flashlight.

Other than being in the woods, Franklin had no idea where he was. He hopped forward, moving from tree to tree. “Hey!” he shouted. He tried to break off branches to use as a crutch and at last found a dead one. He trimmed the twigs from it and hit it against a tree trunk to shorten it. The branch was about four feet long, with a bend at the top. He trusted his weight to it and began to hobble forward.

After ten minutes Franklin came to a cross-country ski trail. He had skied these woods with Sadie in other winters and he knew there were lean-tos where skiers could rest. Franklin turned left and began to make his way along the trail, though he had no idea if he was following the trail out of the woods or going deeper into them. He couldn't put any weight on his ankle and he was afraid to put too much weight on the broken branch. Twice he fell. He felt frantic that his pain should distract him from his daughter. Then he heard a gunshot somewhere behind him. He stopped and tried to see between the trees. It seemed that his light was getting dimmer.