Caged to Kill

by Tom Swyers

  David parked his car along the curb and eased out. He gently closed his car door and walked around the front to the curb, stepping up to the sidewalk in front of the house. He saw a small tin sign in the shape of a street sign hanging over the bowed porch steps that said it was a Sears House. David knew that these were the first kit houses. In the early 1900s, Sears, Roebuck and Company delivered housing plans and all the materials for people to build their own homes. The materials arrived by rail, so David was not surprised to see the railroad tracks running up against the rear of Edith’s backyard.

  “Hello, I see you live in a Sears home. Can I ask what model it is?”

  “Vallonia,” she replied.

  “Nice. I’ve never seen one of these in person before and yours looks like it’s an original. You didn’t enclose the front porch like most people do to get more living area.”

  “You sure know your homes,” she said, pushing back her jet-black mane on either side. Suddenly, she stopped rocking. Her face hardened as she asked: “You’re not from the bank, are you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She resumed rocking, but at a slower pace. “I haven’t seen you or your Mustang in the village before. What brings you here?”

  “I’m looking for Edith Nowak. Would you happen to be her?”

  “Depends who’s asking.”

  “My name is David Thompson. I’m an attorney with an office near Mohawk City.”

  “Did my daughter send you here? Does she still want me to sign those papers?”

  “No, ma’am. I don’t know your daughter.”

  “What’s your business then?”

  “I represent an ex-con from Kranston.”

  “Over what?”

  “I’m just trying to help him put his life back together.”

  “So you know that I worked there, right?”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Yes, I’m Edith Nowak and I worked there twenty-three years. Twenty-three very long years. You know, I had this smartphone app that counted the days until my retirement and pension. I looked at it a few times every day. I just told myself to hold on, my golden years were right around the corner. And what did all this waiting get me? Nothing, Mr. Thompson. Absolutely nothing.”

  As she spoke, David slowly walked up her short walkway towards the porch. The walkway was made from old house bricks. The surface was uneven from frost heaves, like ripples on a lake. He tripped when a brick popped up as he stepped on it. It threw his balance off and he fell onto the wooden stairs leading up to the porch.

  The woman stopped rocking abruptly. “Are you okay?” she asked, straightening up from her chair.

  David looked skyward from his perch on the middle step and saw the skinny frame of a woman. Her pale, oblong face was enveloped by startling jet-black hair on both sides that met under her chin. She stared down at him with an expression of dismay. “Yes, I’m fine, just tripped on a brick,” David said, still sprawled out on the staircase.

  “I’m sorry about that, Mr. Thompson. I’ve been meaning to fix those bricks. I’m afraid I’ve let the place go. There’s no reason to fix it up now. Not that it matters to me at this point, but you aren’t going to sue me are you Mr. Thompson?”

  David picked himself up and brushed himself off as she spoke in a worried tone. “No, Ms. Nowak, but I’d be most appreciative if you could spare some time to answer a few questions.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have much time left on this earth, Mr. Thompson—no thanks to this village. You know why they call this Hoosick Falls?”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t,” David said, standing in the suddenly bright sun. He grimaced from the pain of the fall and shaded his eyes with a hand to peer up at Edith Nowak.

  “Because the most common question around here is, ‘Who’s sick?’”

  David tried to smile through his grimace. He had hurt his hand, too. “What do you mean?”

  “Come out of the sun and sit down by me on the porch here, and I’ll tell you.” Edith pointed to a chair next to her. It was as much a dare as an invitation.

  David climbed up to the porch and spotted the rickety, small wooden chair with a frayed cane seat. He carefully sat down, fearing that the seat would rip and he’d fall through. He finally saw Edith up close, dressed in black Capri pants that emphasized her scrawny legs and a size-too-large gray sweatshirt that hung on her skeletal frame. She had deep bags under her eyes, a mole on her cheek, and cracks that ran like a maze in her jaundiced, weathered skin.

  Waving a hand toward town, Edith began, “For decades the companies at the plastic plant have leaked this chemical. The stuff is called PFOAs—perfluorooctanoic acid. I’ve heard it enough times now that I can say it just right. It’s not something you would drink on purpose and it sunk straight into our water supply. The aquifer, you know? From there it spread into our wells.”

  She continued, “At the plant they made Scotchgard, Gore-Tex, and Teflon products and made millions of dollars from it. Now we are paying the price for it. They even called this place the Teflon capital of the world at one time.”

  Taking a shuddering breath, Edith continued her rant, “Some guy figured the water pollution out a few years ago. The village brass kept it under wraps. They didn’t want to cause a run on the village, afraid of a crash in property prices. But people just kept on getting sick. They’ve finally admitted there’s a problem with the water. I’ve drank that water ever since I was a kid and I’m forty. My daughter drank it. A few weeks ago, I was diagnosed with a rare form of terminal cancer. Who’s sick? I’m sick, Mr. Thompson! I’m deathly ill.”

  David saw his hand had a small cut from the fall that was starting to drip blood. He took a crumpled up tissue out from the pocket of his slacks and pressed it on the wound while he searched for words. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Nowak. I wish . . . I wish I could say or do something . . .”

  “Listening to me helps, Mr. Thompson. I really don’t have anyone left other than my daughter. And she won’t talk to me. Haven’t seen her in a few years.” She shook her head. “I betcha that water killed my parents, too. This was their house before it became mine. Now it’s just a pile of lumber worth a couple grand—just like when Sears delivered it here nearly a hundred years ago. But no bank’s going to write a mortgage on it because of my well water. So I can’t sell it. It’s become my coffin now and a very expensive one at that.”

  “I’m sorry about your daughter.”

  “Don’t be. She’s got good reason to be upset with me.” Edith squeezed her eyes shut to block the tears that threatened. Her shoulders slumped in despair. “You see, she wants to know her father, but I won’t tell her anything about him.”

  David didn’t know what to say. He wanted to ask if Boris Dietrich was the father. She said she loved him in the letters. He wanted to ask all about the unknown man. But he couldn’t risk the interruption. Edith Nowak was singing like the proverbial bird. The last thing that David wanted to do was to say something to seal her lips shut, though that seemed impossible. She was carrying on a mile a minute and the words slipped through her chapped lips like Teflon had coated them over the years. “I see . . . I’m sure you have your reasons.”

  “Yes, I have my reasons.”

  He sat silently, trying to project an air of calm and patience. Wait for it. The reasons are coming.

  “I’m trying to protect my child for her own good and she thinks she doesn’t need to be protected. At twenty-four, she thinks she knows everything.” Blood started to show through the tissue David clutched in his palm. “Say, it looks like you cut yourself there. Come on in and I’ll bandage it up.”

  David rose gingerly from the rickety chair. He followed Edith through the rusty screen door into the living room. Off to her side, she pointed at a Victorian couch under a pair of double-hung windows overlooking the front porch. “Have a seat.” Edith walked stiffly from the living room through an arched opening to the dining room and then disappeared. David spotted a framed photo on t
he end table next to him. It showed a younger Edith holding the hand of a girl not more than four years of age. There were tulips in bloom in the background. It looked like they were dressed in their Easter best, standing in front of one of the churches David had seen on Main Street. David noticed that there was no white margin on the side of the photo where Edith stood. Bending closer, he saw the photo was creased, as if a part of the picture was folded back, hidden from view.

  David heard Edith in another room of the house. There were clicks and squeaking hinges as if she was opening and closing cabinet doors. David quickly picked up the picture and turned it over. It was a cheap plastic frame with the back held on by four bendable metal clips. David thought he could quickly remove the back and look to see the part of the photo that was missing from view.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Thompson.” Edith called from the other room. “I know the bandages are in one of these cabinets. I just don’t remember which one.”

  David hurriedly bent back three of the clips. “I appreciate you looking for one, Ms. Nowak.” He now heard Edith rummaging through one of the cabinets. He slid the cardboard back cover out from the fourth clip by pulling on the flap that held the frame upright. It revealed a man looking away from the camera, off to the side. He pulled the picture close to his face. Unlike Edith and her daughter, the man wasn’t posing for the picture—he was turned away from both of them. David recognized the man but couldn’t place him. He got his cell phone out and snapped a picture of the picture.

  “I found one,” Edith said, from the other room.

  A cabinet door slammed and David could hear slow footsteps approaching. He quickly put the back cover on and folded the clips into place. When Edith entered the living room, he was holding the intact picture frame, studying the image. “I was just looking at this photo. Is this you and your daughter?”

  Edith walked over, biting her lower lip in distress. She held her hand out and he noticed it shook a little. David handed the frame to her. “Yes,” she replied without looking at it. She tucked the photo under her arm and peeled back the paper covering the adhesive strips of the bandage with both hands. “Let me see your cut.” David held up his hand and she put the bandage on. “There you go.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s the least I could do,” Edith said, taking a few steps to the other end of the couch. She eased down and set the photo on the end table by her side, face down. “Now who did you say you were trying to help out? Lots of prisoners have come and gone in the years since I started working there.”

  “I never did give you his name. It’s Phillip Dawkins. Did you know him?”

  “Is he okay? He’s not dead, is he?”

  David’s ears perked up. It sounded as if she knew his life was in danger. “No, Ms. Nowak. Did you think he was dead?”

  “No . . . it’s just that . . .you mentioned him in the past tense—like something had happened to him.”

  “I take it you know him, then?”

  “Not personally. He was in solitary. As secretary to Superintendent Kleinschmit, I wouldn’t have had any contact with him. I know of him through paperwork that I typed up or that passed over my desk, probably on its way to be filed.”

  “You said typed. You don’t still use typewriters at the Bureau of Prisons, do you?” David thought if they still used cassette tapes, maybe they still used typewriters. It was worth asking since the complaint with the Bureau of Licenses over the barbershop was typed.

  “No, no. We have computers now, though they’re pretty old. The only person who might type is Commissioner O’Neil. He’s got an ancient Royal at his desk at the central office in Albany. The same one he’s had for years. But that’ll be gone soon. I hear he’s retiring.” She sighed before continuing. “My former boss, Superintendent Kleinschmit, is going to become the new state commissioner for the prison system.”

  “Do you know O’Neil?”

  “Martin Kleinschmit is a good boss, a good superintendent.”

  “I asked you about Edmund O’Neil.”

  Edith fidgeted in her seat. “Sorry. Mr. O’Neil hired me when he was the superintendent at Kranston. But I haven’t talked with him for years.”

  “When did he hire you?”

  “Back around 1990, I guess. You sure do ask a lot of questions, Mr. Thompson.”

  “Just one more should do it.” David waited until the end for this question. He knew it might be the one topic that shut Edith up for good. But he felt it was time to roll the dice. There was no Boris Dietrich anywhere except in Edith’s file cabinet and David had gotten that information illicitly from Johnny. “Who is Boris Dietrich, if you know him?”

  Edith sat there frozen—lips pressed tightly together, eyes narrowed to slits—staring into space, as the ancient grandfather clock ticked away in the corner of the living room. “No, I’ve never heard of him,” she said with a short negative shake of her head.

  David knew she was lying, but he wasn’t about to call her on it. Not now. Doing that would run the risk of losing her as a source for good, for however long she lived. And she was all he had to go on at the moment. “How about Ewen Cameron? Have you ever heard of him?”

  Edith abruptly stood and heaved a sigh. “No, I’ve never heard of him either. I think you should leave now, Mr. Thompson. I have a doctor’s appointment scheduled in an hour and I have to get ready.”

  David got up. “Sure, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.”

  Edith nodded as she followed him slowly to the screen door.

  David fumbled for parting words as he pushed the door open. What do you say to a dying woman? “I hope your doctor’s visit goes well, Ms. Nowak.”

  “Hope is all I have on my side, but thank you,” she said, closing the door firmly behind David.

  After limping his way to the curb, David sat in the Mustang and pulled out his cell phone to Google the Bureau of Prisons. He found its website and clicked to open it up. After a few more clicks, he was staring at a photo of Edmund O’Neil, the Bureau of Prisons Commissioner. His biography said he was married and mentioned his four children. David compared his snapshot of the man in Edith’s photo to the official studio photo of the commissioner on the website. Though their ages differed, the two men could have been twins. David glanced at Edith’s house through the passenger window of his car. A curtain panel in one of the living room windows was drawn back and he could see part of Edith’s head as she peered out. He could not linger to digest what he had learned. David started up the Mustang and drove away.

  Edmund O’Neil has five children, not four.

  Chapter 17

  Two nights later, Phillip and David were parked in the Mustang in the Palisade section of Mohawk City. They sat diagonally across the street from a two-family home on North Ferry Street in the historic district that was first settled by the Dutch in the 1600s. In the 17th Century, a palisade surrounded the settlement to protect the residents from marauding Frenchmen and Indians. The street where they sat led to a dead end at the Mohawk River. It was a location that had once been a prime address, but no longer.

  In the Palisade, the more weather-beaten homes were located closer to the water because that’s where the floods hit first and most often. Every spring during ice-out the streets would fill with frigid, filthy water as huge floes that jammed under the bridges at a turn in the Mohawk caused the river to back up and spill over its banks. During summer and fall, a sudden deluge could fill the underpasses and low-lying streets to the brim, trapping unwary motorists. It was historic, and more than anything else, it was old.

  Janet Nowak’s two-story building was just a few houses up from the river. The rundown houses on either side of her home displayed yellow condemnation notices in the windows. Gang graffiti decorated the chipboard that blocked entry at the front doors. In the glow of the gaslight-style street lamps, you could still see the flood lines on the weathered clapboard and crumbling brick from the hurricanes that had pummeled the region in the past f
ew years.

  “Duck!” David barked as he slid low behind the steering wheel. The car sat under a large oak, shaded from the street lamp. Phillip dove to the floor on all fours on the passenger side and tried to squeeze his head under the glove compartment. A dog license and ID tag jingled as the figure’s hard-soled shoes clumped on the broken sidewalk like a throbbing heart. The shadow of a man and his canine friend passed by the car.

  David shimmied himself back upright in the bucket seat and peered into his rearview mirror. He watched the retreating figure and listened to the footsteps fading up to higher ground, toward the heart of the city. “It’s all clear. You can get up now.”

  “I can’t,” Phillip gasped. “I’m stuck.”

  “Jeez, give me your hand,” David sighed.

  Phillip’s huge paw engulfed David’s extended hand and he tugged on it until Phillip popped out from under the dash.

  “You don’t have to crawl under there when I say duck,” David gently explained. “Just lean forward and drop your head below the window line.”

  “Okay. Bad habit I guess.”

  David nodded. “I understand.”

  “Can you tell me now why we’re staking out this house?”

  “Janet Nowak is Edith Nowak’s daughter. Edith is the Kranston secretary who’s retiring, who had papers in a file with your name on it. Her daughter, Janet, lives here in that house across the street, alone. Figured that out this morning when she left for work. She has a state job here in Mohawk City at the Workers’ Compensation Board.”

  “How do you know she lives there by herself?”