The Church of Dead Girls (6 page)

J
anice's body was discovered by Megan Kelly, who came to Janice's house every Wednesday morning at ten to clean. It was mid-October and the furnace was on. The house was hot. Janice's three cats, two black ones and a calico, were frantic. They had eaten their food and were starving. People were surprised the neighbors hadn't known something was wrong just from the sounds of the cats, their yowls. But neighbors said they were used to loud noises coming from Janice's house.

Mrs. Kelly was a solidly built woman in her sixties. She claimed she knew something was wrong the moment she opened the door. Certainly the cats were carrying on, but Mrs. Kelly said there was also a smell, the faint sweet smell of early corruption. One of the cats escaped the house immediately, the other two wound themselves round Mrs. Kelly's legs so she nearly fell. Mrs. Kelly hung her coat in the hall closet and got the vacuum cleaner. First she vacuumed the hall. The cats stayed nearby, which surprised her since they hated the noise. Janice was one of those women who felt that rooms should be “bright” and the walls had a pink and yellow wallpaper hung with reproductions of French paintings with lots of flowers and light: Matisse and Bonnard, especially Bonnard. She had heavy furniture with pale flowery covers and a carpet with purple and yellow triangular patterns.

When Mrs. Kelly pushed the vacuum cleaner into the living room, she saw the body. Janice lay on her back between the couch and the fireplace wearing a blue terry cloth robe that must have belonged to one of her larger male friends. The robe was open, so Mrs. Kelly could see bare skin underneath. Janice's face was a bluish color. Her slanted eyes were open and bulging, rolled up as if trying to look back at something on the mantel. She had been strangled but that wasn't the worst thing. The worst thing, according to Mrs. Kelly, was that Janice's left hand had been severed at the wrist and her bone stuck out “just like a white stick in a pool of blood.” Mrs. Kelly first thought that the cats had eaten the hand but that turned out not to be the case.

Mrs. Kelly ran next door to the Washburns' to call the police. Within ten minutes three patrol cars arrived, creating more excitement than Hamilton Street had seen in decades. The officer in charge was Ryan Tavich. He was in his midforties and generally well-liked. The trouble was that he, too, not long before, had been one of Janice's lovers.

And this became a problem: Janice's lovers. Because once the case had begun and no murderer was found within twenty-four hours, attention turned to these men. Some had families and had been seeing Janice secretly. Now their lives were turned upside down. They were suspects, or potential suspects. And not all of them were known, so that men whom no one thought were involved with Janice might indeed have been involved. There was much speculation about this and much exaggeration.

Chief Schmidt called the sheriff in Potterville. Then the state police were called. Ryan, in his own mind at least, was treated quite shoddily. He was a thick, rectangular man, a weight lifter whose shoulders, chest, hips, and thighs all seemed the same distance across. And he had a broad face with a square jaw, short black hair, and dark, almost sullen eyes. The kind of eyes that suggested disappointment. He began the investigation and conducted the first interviews, mainly with neighbors and Janice's ex-husband, Patrick. Then Phil Schmidt talked to the mayor, who talked with the city manager, and it was thought best to remove Ryan from the case.

We had reporters coming down from Utica and Syracuse, even Albany. And the wire services sent the story all over. The fact that Janice's left hand was missing gave special notoriety to the whole business. For a few days one saw camera crews hurrying into City Hall. And so Ryan's affair with Janice, even though she had broken it off the summer before, was considered a problem by everyone except Ryan himself. He had never made a secret of dating Janice. He was single, divorced actually, and they had been seen together, going either to dinner or to the movies. His involvement with Janice made Ryan eager to catch whoever had killed her. To the others, it made him a suspect. And unfortunately the sheriff's department and the state police often treated small-town policemen with disrespect, if only because town police were paid less. They knew Ryan and perhaps liked him, but in their eyes he wasn't quite professional.

Ryan talked to Franklin about this. It was shortly before Michelle died, though everyone thought she would last longer. Sadie was eleven at the time. Ryan went over to Franklin's house, not the one near me, but the ranch house on Jackson Street. Michelle had a bed in the den. The house had a medicinal smell and was kept warm, about eighty degrees. Toward the end Michelle always felt chilled and kept asking her daughter to turn up the heat.

The two men had a couple of beers in the kitchen. When healthy, Michelle had been an energetic housewife despite her job as a photographer, but now that she was sick the house was somewhat shabby. Not that Franklin was lazy or didn't know how to vacuum—he was simply stunned by his wife's illness and had trouble doing anything other than his newspaper work.

Ryan hadn't come to see Franklin because of Janice's murder but because they were friends and because of his sympathy about Michelle's illness. Such understandings have few words attached. So their talk mostly concerned the trivial: how well the high school football team was doing and the chances for the Buffalo Bills in some upcoming game. But Franklin understood that Ryan also grieved. Janice had been dead less than a week.

“Did you love her?” asked Franklin.

Ryan shifted in his chair. “There was a way she could fill your mind.”

“Who broke up with who?”

“She thought I was getting too attached to her.”

Franklin waited for Ryan to say more but Ryan was digging at the label on his Budweiser bottle with his thumb.

“Did it make you angry when she broke off with you?”

“Sure, but I knew she was right. Are you talking to me as a reporter?” Ryan made an attempt at a grin.

“I just wanted to know how you were feeling.”

“I'd think about her all day long. And when I got to her house in the evening, I hardly said hello. I'd just start touching and kissing her. She'd bite my lip. It was painful. Even a week after she broke off with me, I could feel it. And I didn't want the feeling to go away.”

“How long did you see each other?”

“Three months. And she was seeing someone else as well. I didn't care. She might have been seeing a couple of guys for all I know. More power to her.”

“Do they have any idea who killed her?”

“In the autopsy, they figured she'd recently had sex with someone. Then they'd have the DNA unless he'd used a condom. But there was no trace of anything. So maybe it was a woman who killed her. A jealous wife or something.”

“What about the hand?” asked Franklin.

“There's no way to explain it. Crazy, that's all.”

“And you've been taken off the case completely?”

“The state police are conducting the investigation. They think it looks bad if I'm connected with the case. They had to look hard to find guys who
weren't
involved with her. She'd even been into the sheriff's department. Of course the state cops won't admit anything.”

“She had a healthy appetite.”

Ryan kept his eyes on the floor. “You could call it that.”

“Was it just the sex that, you know, kept you seeing her?”

“If it was just that, I'd have already forgotten her. She was a wonderful woman: funny, energetic. Hell, I'd have been happy to hang around her even without the sex.”

“But you'll stay out of it?”

“I can't get her out of my mind. She had a cranberry mark right below her navel. I see it all the time. I'm not going to get Schmidt mad at me, but I'll keep my mind on it. If she was killed by someone in Aurelius, I'll find out.”

“And what will you do about it?”

“I've got to let my feelings settle. When I went into her house that morning, I hadn't been there for months. I recognized the smells and on top of those smells was this other smell, her death smell. She was on the floor, her face all blue and her eyes rolled up. I used to kiss that face. I don't know if you can imagine seeing the face of the woman you love like that. The awfulness of her dead face.” Then Ryan remembered Michelle in the next room and he felt abashed and became silent.

—

Aaron came back from Buffalo for the funeral. He was a senior in college, majoring in mathematics. He didn't stay at his father's house, but at Gillian's Motel. People were struck by this. If he had wanted, he could have stayed with many people, but he chose to stay at the motel. And he was obvious about it, not that he should hide it, but he mentioned it to people, as if staying at Gillian's made a kind of statement.

Paula had come back as well and stayed with her father. I hadn't seen her for some years and she had grown quite beautiful. She certainly had not been unattractive before, but she had exchanged her teenage prettiness for a womanliness. She was tall and thin, with wavy black hair that hung past her shoulders. And she wore glasses with large round lenses. She had finished her master's degree at Binghamton and was working for IBM.

The funeral was held at Saint Luke's Episcopal Church. Patrick sat in front with Paula. Aaron sat across the aisle and a few rows behind with a cousin who had come from Scarsdale. The church was crowded. Of course there were Janice's colleagues from the pharmaceutical company in Norwich, as well as some relatives, even several neighbors. But many people went out of curiosity. Along with Ryan Tavich, who sat with Franklin, there were a number of men in the church, some alone, and it was impossible not to speculate that these men had been involved with Janice.

Janice had been cremated, and on a stand at the front of the church rested a white cardboard box about the right size for a corsage. It was amazing to think its contents had been powerful enough to turn the hearts of so many men topsy-turvy. Around the stand were asters, lilies, and roses, hundreds of roses. McHugh's Flower Shop on Jefferson Street was quite sold out and flowers were sent from as far away as Utica. Even this was amazing, in that the volume of flowers exceeded the volume of the little white box by about a thousand to one. And it was hard not to imagine that the box contained not her ashes but her heart.

Father John conducted the service and Eunice Duncan played the organ. Bach, I think. Father John spoke of Janice's career as a scientist, of her being a woman active on the frontiers of medicine, though, as I say, she was no more than a technician. He spoke of the tragedy that Janice had been taken from our community so violently. He spoke of her energy and good humor. He spoke of her warm and loving nature. In truth, that was the only remark which, by the farthest stretch of the imagination, might have referred to her men friends.

A certain tension arose from the suspicion that Janice's murderer was in the church at that moment. Ryan kept looking around and there were plainclothesmen in evidence, including one in the organ loft with Eunice Duncan. Did they expect the killer suddenly to betray him- or herself when confronted with that sad little cardboard box and the doleful words of Father John? I suspect many people thought something theatrical would happen, which was partly why they came. But in fact, nothing happened.

The service came to an end and people wound their way to Homeland Cemetery, a procession of cars with their lights on led by the Cadillac hearse from Belmont's Funeral Home. It was raining, the leaves had turned, and the peak of color had passed. Perhaps half the people in the church went to the cemetery, Ryan Tavich and Franklin among them, as well as several plainclothesmen. Father John spoke to the people grouped by the grave and there were many umbrellas.

Homeland is a pretty place, with large oaks and quite a few stones from the Victorian period, weeping dryads and angels. People formed a semicircle and Aaron stood across the grave from his father and his half sister. It was a little grave for a little box and was dwarfed by the flowers, especially the roses, which had been brought from the church. The grave would soon have a very large stone, paid for by Patrick. Someone said the stone was so big that it could have included a drawer in which to put the box of ashes. Others felt that the purchase of such a stone, at least six feet high, was an act of defiance on Patrick's part. Still others found it in bad taste, as if Janice shouldn't have a stone, as if her ashes should have been sprinkled somewhere along the Loomis River.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened. The service ended and people departed, leaving a muddy trail through the wet grass. Before the end of the month some of these same people joined together again for the funeral of Michelle Moore, and this time Franklin and little Sadie would be the chief mourners. It was a much smaller funeral with far fewer flowers but with a full-sized casket. No policemen came, except for Ryan Tavich.

I
would hear about the murder investigation from several sources, including my cousin. The investigation was hampered by too many leads—all of Janice's lovers—and none: no one had seen anything. Many of Janice's lovers were identified. Their alibis were questioned. A certain scandal accompanied this, since some were married, involved with other women, or well-known within the community, like Judge Marshall in Potterville. And there was the likelihood of more lovers who hadn't yet been identified. There was also the chance that the murderer was a woman. And of course it was possible that the murder was unconnected to Janice's love life.

It was hard not to brood about Janice's missing left hand. Presumably it existed somewhere. In volume it must have equaled the contents of the white cardboard box. Why had it been taken in the first place? To kill Janice in a jealous rage was perhaps understandable; to cut off her hand was an act of madness.

Several times I heard from my cousin that the police were about to make an arrest, but nothing happened. Some of the men involved with Janice had no alibis, or very poor ones, but that fact by itself didn't establish guilt. Patrick McNeal was interrogated and the police in Buffalo were asked to establish where Aaron had been at the time of the murder. Even Paula's movements were scrutinized.

As more days passed, we increasingly realized that answers would be slow in coming. One began to hear more often that the murderer was somebody from out of town, somebody unknown to us. The murderer must have come from Utica or Syracuse, even Norwich. The state police had taken over the case altogether, though the sheriff's department still had a deputy involved. But the state police had resources that the county didn't. As for our own policemen, Ryan Tavich alone remained busy, but only in off-hours and mostly with discretion. After all, he was a suspect himself.

It was determined that Janice had been killed late Sunday night or early Monday morning. Her neighbors said she had been out all evening and must have returned after they had gone to bed. There was no clue to where she had been, though about eleven she had stopped for gas at the Cumberland Farms on the north side of town. But no one came forward to say that he or she had been with Janice. In the afternoon she had raked leaves on her front lawn. The questions were: Where had she spent the evening, when had she come home, and had she come home alone? After two weeks went by without any answers, interest began to wane.

In any case, soon after the funeral, interest in Janice's murder was partly eclipsed by the behavior of her son, Aaron. He presumably meant to return to college, but instead of leaving after the burial, he remained in town. He was just twenty-one and he was observed in several of our local bars.

There was a waitress, Sheila Murphy, who worked at Bud's Tavern, a red-haired woman a year or so older than Aaron. I had had her in science class—a good-natured but thoroughly mediocre student. Sheila had waited tables at Bud's since high school graduation. Her father worked for the city road crew. The mother, I believe, did little but play Bingo.

No one realized that Aaron was seeing Sheila and perhaps he hadn't been seeing her, in the normal meaning of the term, except in the tavern, till one night about two weeks after his mother's funeral. They appeared to have no history, or rather their history began in medias res.

What happened was this. Around two-thirty in the morning a dozen people in Gillian's Motel were suddenly roused by screams of pain and rage. At least that is what witnesses told Franklin. These were people passing through town—salesmen, business people—and perhaps there were a few local men and women engaged in secret assignations, though usually they go to Potterville for that, or farther afield.

Several men ran into the hall, pulling up their trousers or straightening their pajamas. Just then Aaron's door flew open and Sheila Murphy came rushing out. She was wearing jeans and nothing else. There was a large amount of blood on her breasts. I say “large amount” because the witnesses disagreed as to how much, but even a small amount would have been terrible and of course she was screaming. She had large breasts and it became clear that the left one was bleeding. Blood dripped on the carpet and even got on the walls. One of the men took her into his bathroom. Another called the police. Aaron appeared at the doorway. He was said to be smiling, not a happy smile but somewhat boastful. He was shirtless and his long hair was out of its ponytail. Several men mentioned the L-shaped scar on Aaron's left cheek, how it was red while the rest of his cheek was pale.

It turned out that Aaron had bit Sheila, nearly taking a piece out of her left breast. He bit her to the extent that she needed stitches. My cousin answered the call. Aaron refused to talk. In fact, Chuck had to protect him from several of the men in the motel who felt that Aaron should be punished right there.

By this time Sheila had stopped screaming and stood in the hall with a blood-stained white towel pressed to her breasts, calling Aaron an animal and a pervert. Of course everyone in that part of the motel was wide-awake and the owners, Jimmy and Kate Gillian, were terribly upset. People assumed Aaron was drunk. Chuck took him away, trotted him in handcuffs down to the police station. An ambulance arrived to take Sheila to the hospital, though she claimed that she didn't need one, that she could drive herself, but in the end she rode in the ambulance. Someone gathered up the rest of her clothes. The Gillians tried to calm their guests and eventually everyone returned to their rooms.

The fact that three years earlier Aaron had bitten off Hark Powers's ear was lost on no one. People called Aaron The Vampire. His actions were horrible, but they also had a comic quality, although not for the people concerned. Aaron and Sheila had been drinking and had returned to Gillian's after Bud's closed. Sheila said Aaron wanted her to remove her jeans and she refused. They argued, then began to wrestle. Sheila was a big girl and her years of tavern work had accustomed her to the worst of male behavior. Anyway, she fought back. It was then that Aaron bit her and wouldn't let go until Sheila struck him with her knee in the groin area. By then Aaron had done his damage.

Aaron claimed to have been drunk, but that excuse was insufficient. Charges were filed and a court date was set. Once again Patrick bailed his son out of jail and bail was accepted on condition that Aaron live in his father's house. Ryan Tavich talked to Sheila and to the judge. Much was made of the fact that Aaron's mother had been buried two weeks before. Although Sheila was furious, she had a kind heart. The upshot was that Aaron paid her medical bills. He received a suspended sentence and one year's probation. He also had to enter therapy, which he chose to do in Buffalo, with the result that by the beginning of the second semester he was back in college.

People were surprised that Aaron had got off so easily and some, like Hark Powers, went so far as to suggest a conspiracy in Aaron's favor, but there was little evidence of that. We all realized that Aaron had been fortunate. And we were pleased when he left town. It seemed the last page of an unpleasant story.

As the months passed, people stopped thinking about Aaron. Hark Powers took a job as a mechanic at Jack Morris's Ford dealership. Whenever I saw him, which was not often, I would think of what Aaron had done to him, because even though Hark wore his hair long we all knew he was missing an ear. And he hadn't changed. He was still loud. He was still a bully. If Aaron's attack was meant to teach him a lesson, it hadn't, though perhaps he was more careful about whom he abused. For a short time he dated Sheila Murphy, which seemed appropriate since they both bore Aaron's tooth marks, but it didn't last. Sheila said Hark slapped her, and people said she was one of those women destined to be abused by men. But once I went into Bud's Tavern just to have a look at her and she seemed perfectly pleasant, though she was loud and smoked too much.

No one saw Aaron for more than a year. He got his degree and did a semester of graduate study in computer science. Presumably he communicated with his father and half sister, but even that was unknown to us. Because we taught together, I saw Patrick often, but he had become more withdrawn and wouldn't socialize. People said he was looking for a job in another town. And the fall after Janice's murder, he moved to Utica. Coincidentally it was at that time that his daughter returned to take a job as a guidance counselor in the dean of students' office at the college. Even people who felt that Aurelius was the best town in the world didn't see why she had returned. In fact, she moved into her father's house.

I don't think anybody realized Aaron was back in town, too, but his sister must have known and others as well, though Aaron avoided the bars and didn't seem to go out much. He had moved back in December, rented an apartment in a brick apartment complex near City Hall, and was employed as an analyst for a database company in New York City, meaning he worked at home with a computer. This fact struck me as the strangest of all. Aaron had a job that enabled him to live anywhere, but he chose to live in Aurelius. But hadn't his sister moved back as well, as if both needed to be near Janice's ashes? Though perhaps that is too melodramatic.

As for Janice's murder, the police were no further along than on the day of her death. Often in these cases there is knowledge even when there is no concrete evidence for a grand jury. The police have suspicions, even certainties, which get talked about. But in this case there was nothing. It was assumed that Janice met someone passing through town, or perhaps someone had visited her from out of town. Of course all the people staying at the motels, even motels fifty miles away, had been investigated.

The dominant theories were those easiest to believe: the killer was someone from far away. If anyone suggested that the killer might be a person we saw regularly—a teacher at one of the schools or someone who worked in a shop—that suggestion was met with scorn. In our minds, the case was closed. There was even a sanctimoniousness about Janice's death: that the nature of her life, its sexual untidiness, had brought about her demise.

But we'd thought the case of Aaron McNeal had been closed as well and here he was again.