Authors: Tricia Dower
Stony River (45 page)
(15-second pause)
JUKES | You know what a carpenter's level is? |
ROTELLA | I do. |
JUKES | Sometimes the bubble will go way up here, you know? |
ROTELLA | For the benefit of the recording, Mr. Jukes is tipping an imaginary carpenter's level to show how the bubble could drift. Okay, go on. |
JUKES | When it goes way up, you have to bring it back. Compensate, like you said about your clothes. |
ROTELLA | What happens when you don't bring it back? |
JUKES | That's not good. |
ROTELLA | Not good like in seventh grade when you hurt that girl and spent two months in juvenile detention and another four in a mental hospital? Sandra Kopec was her name. You remember her? |
JUKES | Not very well. That was a long time ago. Guess you have my records. |
ROTELLA | We do. You roughed her up pretty bad. Why was that? |
JUKES | I don't remember. I was a stupid kid. I didn't know about the bubble then. |
ROTELLA | Your records indicate you suffered from hallucinations and delusions. You were apparently free of them when you were released, but the doctor's report noted that stress could trigger a relapse. You under stress these days, Buddy? |
JUKES | Are you a doctor? |
ROTELLA | Nope. Just curious, as I said before. A student of human nature. |
JUKES | Sometimes what doctors call a delusion isn't. |
ROTELLA | Can you give me an example? |
JUKES | The devil's as real as God even though you can't see either of them. The devil can get into you and take over when you're angry. Other times, too. |
ROTELLA | What other times? |
JUKES | When you have impure thoughts. |
ROTELLA | You mean about sex? |
JUKES | Yes. |
ROTELLA | What do you do when you have impure thoughts, Buddy? |
ROTELLA | Yeah, you've got a muscular build. I'm impressed. What else? |
JUKES | Just try to keep busy and show the devil he can't own me. Stay away from places he likes. He's supernatural but he can't be in two places at once. |
ROTELLA | Where's the devil like to go, Buddy? |
JUKES | Bars, card games, parks at night. I stay away from them. |
ROTELLA | When you're trying to avoid the devil, Buddy, do you sometimes head out in the car? You know, drive around to clear your thoughts? |
JUKES | Yeah, sometimes, but I have to be careful because if the devil got in he'd start driving the car. |
ROTELLA | Is it the devil that offers rides to people? |
JUKES | Of course not. He doesn't care about people who are tired or shouldn't be out in the dark by themselves. |
ROTELLA | Ever given a ride to a guy? |
JUKES | No! |
ROTELLA | No need to take offense. It was a reasonable question. Why not? |
JUKES | They can take care of themselves. It's not dangerous for them. They wouldn't be scared enough. |
ROTELLA | Scared enough for what? (Sound of door opening. Footsteps) |
ROESCH | You're free to go now, Buddy. Your wife posted bail, brought a lawyer with her. Somebody will notify you of your trial date. Show up, okay? |
ROTELLA | I need more time, Artie. I think we're making progress. ROESCH |
ROTELLA | I haven't shown him the last picture yet. |
ROESCH | Well, that's the way she goes. |
FEW PEOPLE
telephone Miranda. She recognizes Enzo's voice right away.
“I know he had something to do with the missing girl, Evelyn Shore, if not the dead one, Barbara Pickens,” he tells her, recounting an interview the day before with a man he suspects of several crimes. “I was so close to gaining his confidence. And I would have if I'd conducted the whole interview. The other detective hit him too hard at the beginning and put him on his guard. Then we ran out of time before I could ask him how the devil gets into him or show him the dead girl's morgue picture. Twenty puncture wounds that look like leeches, on her chest, shoulders and arms. Made with a double-edged knife. If they've got any soul at all, the morgue shots get to them.”
Enzo's disembodied voice is youthful, energetic. His passion for his work helps Miranda turn her mind away from the stinging sensation on her arms and chest. She recalls the sharp pain she'd felt in her chest as soon as Doris said Bill Nolan had been shot. She doesn't always need to enter an object to hear a victim speak to her.
“I wanted to ask if he was on medication,” Enzo says, “and if he could go back, what he would change. He's twenty and set to be a father in two months, but he looked like a kid in that bare, intimidating room, all curved in on himself. If he's done what I think he has, he's evil, but I wanted to hug him, tell him he wasn't alone. Is that crazy?”
“I don't think so. I read somewhere that each of us is both killer and killed. Captive and captor, too,” she adds, thinking of James. “You saw yourself in him and felt compassion.”
“A dangerous trait for a cop,” he says. He tells her there's been a promising development. A high-school student claims that this same man, this suspect, assaulted her in a wooded area that might be the one in which Barbara Pickens's body was found. They brought the suspect in for a lineup and she picked him out with no hesitation. The girl is reluctant to testify in court; Enzo will keep working on her. If she backs out, they can always subpoena her.
Enzo hasn't called just to share his day. The suspect's wife's name is Ladonna, he tells Miranda. How's that for a coincidence? They need a statement from the wife, so he's volunteered to take it. And he knows it's an imposition, but if he can get something that belongs to the suspect, would Miranda be willing to tell him what she sees in it?
It's been nearly a year since she entered that poor girl's petticoat and sensed Bill Nolan's presence in error. “I cannot,” she says. “I simply cannot.”
TWENTY - SEVEN
NOVEMBER 5, 1959
. Buddy would be home soon. Tereza struggled to concentrate on cooking his oatmeal. Lately, following her own thoughts was like listening to a TV playing in another room where somebody kept changing the channels.
Buddy's lawyer, Maury Sawicki, said the attempted kidnapping charge wouldn't stick; Buddy's only crime was caring too much about vulnerable girls. Tereza had looked up “vulnerable.”
Defenseless
. Like the baby inside her. Growing one was a big whoop. Somebody told Tereza unborn babies feel and hear everything their mothers do and sponge up their emotions. She had to stay cheerful and keep thatâha, ha, thanks, Buddyâbubble in the middle.
She was back to having breakfast ready when Buddy got home from night shift. They'd kept him on at the A&P but moved him to the Cranford store and put him on nights to keep him out of sight. Too many customers would've seen his face in the paper. Dearie was afraid they'd take back the red plastic coffee scoop imprinted “A&P 100 Years,” but they didn't.
Tereza was having to learn the meaning of words like
prosecute, indict
and
acquit.
Maury said he might want her to testify at the assault trial about how Buddy had never hurt her. But if she went on the witness stand the prosecution could ask her anything, so Maury said to think about it. He didn't want Dearie to testify for that reason.
Didn't want either of them saying much of anything to anybody before the trial. “You don't know who might be a plant. They need a conviction for political reasons, and if they can railroad Buddy, they will.”
Tereza was supposed to trundle off to work as though her life hadn't been thrown into a Mixmaster. She was supposed to say “No comment” to the reporters camped out across the street who shouted rude questions whenever she left the house, but she told them to get stuffed.
She glanced over at the 1960 calendar Dearie had bought and stuck on the fridge. Dearie had marked the dates like birthdays. January 12, Trial #1: attempted kidnapping. February 23, Trial #2: kidnapping, assault with a weapon and uttering death threats. March 23: grand jury.
If the grand jury said the cops had enough on Buddy to try him for Marilyn Shore's still-missing sister, there'd be another date on the calendar. Buddy had taped a Bible verse next to it: “Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you in prison, that you may be tested ⦠Be faithful to death, and I will give you the crown of life.” It made Tereza shiver.
She thought Maury was pulling her leg when he said Trial #2 was about Linda Wise. Buddy humping Linda? Never. He said he recalled asking those two girls if they wanted a ride but not Linda, even though she'd identified him in a lineup. Tereza told him she and Linda had lived on the same street once, but that didn't ring any bells for him.
The door to the porch swung open and Buddy was in the kitchen, making Tereza jump. Somehow she'd missed the sound of his car in the drive and the garage door slamming shut.
She mustered a smile. “How was work?”
He grunted and scraped past her, his boots leaving black marks on the floor. She heard the bathroom door shut. He'd been sulky for the
past week, ever since she'd given the cops a statement about his whereabouts the night Marilyn Shore's sister disappeared. She and Maury had sat in a room stinking of B.O. and cigarettes. A detective with a face that looked like somebody had taken an ice pick to it showed her a pair of baby blue skivvies and asked if they were hers. Maury hadn't let her answer. He told her later that the cops might be trying to pin a stabbing murder as well as the Shore girl's disappearance on Buddy.