THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE

by Jason Whitlock

  “Did you mention this to Marie?”

  “I guess not; it was Marie we thought was watching. Besides, what if she is a dyke? She’s harmless, right? If it made her day, helped her to get off, what the hell, right?”

  Earlier that week, Burke had interviewed Marie, sensing in her none of the supposed loopiness described by Renate. Marie came across as being committed and taking her work seriously. Judging from her success in placing dancers with the local theater, she was good at it. She gave Burke nothing worthwhile in his investigation into the murder, saying only that the victim was one of her better pupils for whom she had high expectations.

  After only ten minutes questioning, Burke suggested they meet for coffee, afterward; he was concerned about disrupting her incoming class, he confessed, smiling the smile on which Sara believed his parents to have spent a fortune. Marie promised to get back to him, if he cared to leave a card. He did, looking forward to a call that never came, leaving him to conclude, where it concerned the dance instructor, Renate’s characterization had more to do with envy than truth.

  “My mother will be home soon, Chris; don’t poop out on me now,” Renate said petulantly.

  “Lay off, Ren. Besides, this could be important,” he protested, attempting to read.

  “More important than this?” She was urgent, purposefully grinding her crotch into his hips. Struggling to maintain his concentration, Burke read:

  From the New York Times, WASHINGTON

  ____________________________

  The FBI has smashed a child pornography ring involving sixteen people who traded and produced online videos that depict the sexual abuse and beatings of young children—some of them their own family members—authorities said Friday.

  The FBI investigation, which involved postal inspectors and Canadian authorities, lasted nearly two years and identified more than two dozen children between the ages of four and fourteen who appear in the videos. More arrests are expected.

  The ring, which spanned seven states and three Canadian provinces, involved a brutal form of spanking and children involved in various sex acts with other children and adults, frequently their own parents or relations.

  Agents were tipped off to the network after an assistant school principal from Montreal was arrested for the second time, in May of 2014. When Canadian authorities arrested the man they found computer files depicting children being beaten with whips and paddles.

  Despite the best efforts of Renate, Burke remained uninspired. He continued to read, learning that on the basis of internet transmissions and information retrieved from computer hard drives, additional suspects had been apprehended in Montreal Quebec, Vancouver British Columbia, Brewton Alabama, LeHigh Acres Florida, Vanceburg Kentucky, Wisconsin Rapids Wisconsin and, most interesting and important to Burke, Albany, Jamestown and Mineola New York. Among those arrested were a bank security guard, a Catholic Sunday School teacher (no surprise there, thought Burke), an elementary school teacher (or there), a computer programmer, a local Chief of Police and a city mayor, among other high profile and in authority individuals. Eight women had been detained, allegedly the mothers of some of the children appearing in the videos.

  “Fuck me,” Burke said under his breath.

  “I’m trying,” said Renate, “but you’re making it hard. Or…you’re not.” She giggled.

  “It’s not what I mean. This.” He waved the article. “The world is full of fucking perverts.” Burke continued to read:

  “I’ve been in this a long, long time, and we’ve always seen isolated cases, but they were just that—isolated,” said FBI Investigator Johnson C. Brown, who helped run the investigation.

  FBI spokesperson Joseph Doeung said, “Since the popularization of the Internet, such activity has become more organized, particularly with the use of online chat rooms and social networks, though we have reason to believe this group has been operating for years, as far back as the early sixties. With the advent of computer technology, they’ve simply become more sophisticated, more widespread and more difficult to apprehend. This is a fine example of cooperation between federal agencies—on both sides of the border—and local authorities. We’re presently working with Sheriffs’ departments in thirteen states and Canadian provincial authorities in Quebec, British Columbia and Ontario.” The task is daunting, he went on to say, with the roots of abuse stretching back years, practiced almost ritualistically among families, friends and even, he said, entire communities.

  Eventually, Renate wiggled her way to Burke’s shoulders, straddling his chest, making it difficult for him to breathe. He completed the article, tossed the newspaper aside and with his penis beginning to respond and his mind fixed on an image of Marie Radigan and Renate cavorting naked together in a hot—no: a cold shower—he commenced to fondle her bare breasts. “Your nipples remind me of kisses,” he said, “Hershey’s Chocolate Kisses.”

  “Mmm…mmm… melt in your mouth good.” She giggled, leaning her body forward to touch a swollen breast to his tongue. “Eat up, Chrissy; there’s more where that came from.”

  …

  Had she been aware of this activity, Sara Pridmore might herself have been compelled to utter the phrase, “Fuck me, the world is full of perverts”. But she wasn’t, so instead she set down her own copy of the Saturday New York Times. Sara sat silent in the small, comfortable kitchen of the Episcopal rectory. Opposite her at the breakfast table, Reverend Cassie McMaster sat sipping from a shared tin of diet soda. Cassie had prepared lunch, tuna salad sandwiches, which Sara ate without bread.

  “You need meat on your bones, Sara; eat. You’re too thin,” Cassie said, offering the lunch.

  Cassie herself glanced surreptitiously to the refrigerator now, as if for her everything inside that might be calorie laden and artery clogging was calling. Listening carefully, Cassie imagined she could distinguish (just barely audible over the hum of the compressor) the words, “Eat me Cassie. You know you want to, if not now, eventually. Eat me!” (Jesus, Cassie thought, before this is over, I’m likely to put on twenty pounds.)

  “I eat.” Sara was defensive, not for the first time, about her physique. Political correctness deemed it thoughtless to openly ridicule the overweight, yet thought nothing of tormenting the thin. Sara nibbled on celery sticks and baby carrots.

  “You don’t,” Cassie argued, “seeds and nuts, like a squirrel—or a bird—but not like a real person, a proper meal.” Cassie had herself read the Times article, when finished passing it off to Sara. “Is it relevant, do you think?”

  Cassie’s pretty and normally made-up face was drawn, drained of color like chalk. The little make-up she wore was carelessly applied. Crumbs from a shortbread biscuit littered her housecoat, in contrast, Sara thought, to her usually meticulous and well thought-out appearance. Cassie’s hands burned, post-traumatic eczema flaring with a vengeance.

  “Apparently. The FBI thinks so.” Sara recounted her conversation with Joe Doeung, immediately feeling guilt over her lack of appropriate follow-up, thinking she’d need to also request a read-out of calls incoming and outgoing to the victim’s mobile phone.

  Cassie placed her palm on the newspaper that lay open on the table before them. “The article says nothing about murder.”

  “No,” admitted Sara. “It’s an escalation, of sorts; at least according to Joe Doeung.”

  “Can this be connected with Missy’s death?” asked Cassie. “Does it mean she was involved in this business, Sara? Or Eugene?” Cassie shuddered to think.

  “It may,” said Pridmore, “though not this business specifically. I see no reason to believe she might have been. Besides, it’s hard to believe this could happen here, right under our nose.”

  “You’d be surprised, Sara—shocked—at what goes on under some people’s nose.”

  “Are you speaking from experience, Cass? Tell me what went on under the nose at Maggie and Eugene’s?”

  Cassie cradled herself as if she were cold. “Nothing, never: it wouldn
’t have occurred to me to think in those terms. Not about Eugene and Mag. If I knew something, don’t you think I’d say?”

  Becoming tetchy, Sara said, “We’ve been through this. Missy was having sex, consensual, even though she wasn’t of an age to consent to anything, which means, if nothing else, whoever was sleeping with her is guilty of statutory rape. If she was being either physically threatened or coerced, we see nothing to suggest it. And who would be in a position to emotionally coerce? A doctor? A teacher? An instructor? A family member?” Sara thought of Jordy Bitson. “But your family isn’t talking and either are you. Not to the police anyway. Knowing what the Medical Examiner had to say, I’d think you would be more forthcoming. Were you blind to her behavior, in denial, or covering up?”

  Despite the mounting physical and circumstantial evidence to the contrary, on subsequent visits to the Bitson residence the family refused, unequivocally, to disparage Missy’s conduct. It was honorable but counterproductive. If sex were involved, it was rape, despite the results of the medical findings. They refused to accept the opprobrious characterization of the evidence. If Missy were courting trouble, they claimed steadfastly, she was doing it on a tight leash.

  Cassie gave Sara a withering look. “No one is covering up, Sara, because there is nothing to cover up. This is beyond our capacity to absorb, that’s all, or to understand. It’s as if we’re talking about someone else, in the third person; it’s surreal. Maybe we simply can’t—understand it, or absorb it. Why should we? She’s gone now. You can’t bring her back.”

  “It’s what Maggie says.”

  “It’s true, isn’t it? She died horribly and alone. There is nothing we can do for it now but to protect her reputation. There is nothing you can do now but slander it. It’s easy for you, to be clinical and detached. To you, she wasn’t family.”

  Cassie regretted the remark, knowing it was unfair, yet unable to repent and unable to apologize. She needed an outlet for both her anger and her anguish so she lashed out at Sara, who like a rock was protective, understanding and ready to accept this obligation—perhaps even welcoming of it—as if it were her own.

  In the year since they had become acquainted and despite the more than fifteen year gap in their ages, Sara had proven to be better equipped, emotionally and morally even, than Cassie, the Servant of God, to understand and weather the inevitable and destructive vicissitudes of life. And what of Maggie, poor Maggie, having lost now not only one child, but two? How would she survive this trauma, how would she bear-up? She had been so careful to monitor and manage the daily routine of her daughters, having them telephone when they arrived at their destination and before they returned for home. Inevitably, as children do, they complained and they rebelled, but who could foresee that Missy, at only thirteen, would do so to such a destructive extreme?

  “Let’s not fight,” said Cassie after a moment.

  “We’re not fighting. You’re emoting. That’s good. If you don’t, you’ll explode. Nothing you say right now will anger me, or turn me away. It may hurt—a little bit.” Sara smiled. “I may wish you hadn’t said it and that you’d take it back, but not because it’s wrong, Cass. Because maybe, it’s too close to the truth.”

  Sara moved to stand with Cassie, by the window overlooking the small garden. Bordering the church cemetery, here the garden received the full benefit of the sun, its spring perennials in full and colorful bloom. Death in the midst of life, thought Sara lyrically.

  “We have so little to go on,” Sara admitted. “Only that for a girl her age, Missy was involved in some pretty heavy duty stuff. Toxicology will show whether she was intoxicated or drugged, but the physical evidence is conclusive, Cass. We owe it to the community as much as we owe it to Missy to know all we can.” Without preamble, Sara then asked, “Tell me about her cousin?”

  “Kendra?”

  “Jordy, Kendra’s brother.”

  “What’s to tell?” Cassie moved from the window to the table, dragging her body as if it were an over-weighted sack. “Jordy is trouble, with a capital T. I warned Missy to stay away from him. For a while, she did, but from either curiosity or attraction, she kept being drawn back to his flame; like a moth.”

  “Why were you concerned?”

  “C’mon, Sara, wouldn’t you? You know as well as I; Jordy is responsible for most of what’s happened over the last few months here in town: the broken windows, the desecrated gravesites, the graffiti, the vandalism. It’s him. He may not be personally responsible for all of it, but my guess he’s the motivation behind most of it. He’s an instigator, Church Falls’ answer to Fagin. Jordy commands a small group of shit disturbers; small but committed.”

  “You never mentioned this to me before.” Sara thought briefly of a long list of other daily obligations and responsibilities that lay piling up on her desk and to which her attention was long overdue.

  “Not my job is it? Besides, sanctity of the confessional and all that.”

  “Jordy spoke to you about this?”

  For the first time that day, Cassie smiled. Not ironic, but genuinely amused. “No silly, figure of speech.”

  “Aside from Jordy being rambunctious and destructive, what else?”

  “Drugs?”

  “You know this for a fact?”

  “No. This I definitely would have confided to you.”

  “Do you have any reason to believe Missy may have been using?”

  “Not at all. But then again, I didn’t suspect she was having sex either did I? Still can’t imagine it if you want the truth. Am I naïve, Sara? I shouldn’t be, after all I’ve seen and done myself.”

  “No.” Sara reached out, touching Cassie’s hand. Cassie replied by squeezing tightly. “No, not at all. Simply willing to see the better side of human nature in people even, if sometimes, it isn’t there.”

  “Missy was a good girl, Sara.” Before Sara could tell her it was not what she meant to say, Cassie continued. “Sometimes, she gave the impression of being grown-up, an adult trapped inside the body of a child. She could be headstrong and rebellious, but always, I thought, in attitude rather than behavior. When she started to sprout, physically, that’s when it became difficult for Maggie, harder to manage the curfew, the clothes, the make-up.”

  “Not so sweet and innocent Missy.”

  Cassie said, “I was closest to her, Sara; closer than Maggie, closer than Mandy, closer than anyone. I thought so, anyway. How could I not recognize the signs? I’m a PhD for God sake, supposedly trained to sense troubled behavior. And it’s not as if I don’t have experience of my own to draw on, is it? Jesus, I remember being that age, vividly: what I did, what I was like. I slept with every guy in junior and senior high. I knocked them down in bunches, as if they were bowling pins. It showed on my face, for God sake, like a scar.” Cassie paused for a moment, then said, “Is there any truth, do you think, that the apple never falls far from the tree?”

  “Stop Cassie; she didn’t take after you. And what happened to your sister, with Eugene, was a mistake; she didn’t take after her mother. Missy isn’t responsible for being violated. She isn’t responsible for getting herself killed. Don’t portray her that way.”

  “It’s not what I was suggesting, Sara. I was thinking of Jordy. About his family, about their past.”

  Curious, Sara sat forward, retrieving her hand from Cassie’s grasp.

  “The Bitsons?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me more.”

  As best as she was able, Cassie related to Sara events she recalled from thirty years ago. She was only a child herself.

  “I couldn’t have been more than six, maybe seven. My brother had just been shipped to Vietnam. He’d volunteered, apparently, and my mother held my father responsible, as if my brother going overseas were somehow his idea. My mother never forgave Dad; she’s spent the last thirty years submerged in a bottle, trying to forget.” It was during this time, she said, that Drew Bitson—Eugene’s elder brother—had been accused
in the rape and murder of a local girl. “He couldn’t have been convicted though,” Cassie decided, “because he did go on to college and to play pro ball, didn’t he?”

  Her memory of the events was understandably obscure, so many years removed that it was now not open to discussion among family members or the small, if not so tightly knit, community.

  Sara said, “It must have been what Rena was referring to; events in the past, she told me. I thought she was referring to the psychic.”

  “Angelique? My competition for the hearts and souls of the good folks here in town?”

  “Yeah, Ed’s wife believes she somehow has an inside track on naming the killer.”

  Cassie shrugged. “I only mention it myself, to make a point. Just because Drew Bitson wasn’t convicted doesn’t mean he didn’t do it. Maybe all those years ago, he did get away with murder.”