Chuck was rather dismissive. “Statistically it’s almost always the family.” Then he softened a little. “Yeah, I felt bad about it too.”
I suppose he meant that the police couldn’t afford to overlook any possibility, but it upset people that the Malloys or Shillers might be suspected.
Once again FBI agents were seen going into City Hall. Ryan said that Captain Percy especially blamed himself for Meg’s disappearance: if he had done everything to find Sharon, Meg would still be safe. It was something he kept repeating. And some people suggested that the two disappearances were unrelated. Perhaps Meg had been abducted by someone else or hadn’t been abducted at all. This seemed unlikely, but, as Ryan told Franklin, the possibility had to be explored.
The Friends of Sharon Malloy were revitalized by Meg’s disappearance. This is not to say they were pleased that it took place, but the search for Sharon had increasingly reached a dead end. Meg’s disappearance gave it new life. Within hours, at least fifty of the Friends were hunting between the houses on Van Buren, somewhat to the irritation of Captain Percy, who said that their presence interfered with the dogs that had been brought from Utica and that the Friends would confuse or obliterate the trail.
By the next morning, November 1, the storefront rented by the Friends of Sharon Malloy was crowded with volunteers. And they were more eager to pursue an investigative role. Late in the morning several members, including Donald Malloy, went to the house of Houari Chihani, meaning to talk to him. They had no idea that he was dead until they arrived and found the police. One wonders what they would have done had Chihani been alive. But possibly one can have some idea considering what happened to Harry Martini, the principal of Knox Consolidated. In mentioning this, I get ahead of myself, but it is more pertinent here than later on. I should say it was absolutely trivial and had nothing to do with the disappearances, but it gives the mood of the group and of the town as a whole.
Harry Martini had been married to his wife, Florence, for twenty-five years. It was a marriage best described as frosty, and if Harry had had the courage he would have divorced his wife. But he was nervous about the school board and the general opinion of the town, though I don’t believe a divorce would have jeopardized his position. Harry and his wife had two children. The older, Sally, worked for Kodak in Rochester; the younger, Harold Junior, was a student at Alfred University. Not a very bright boy but well-meaning. Though Harry and his wife lived together, they had separate bedrooms and spent little time in each other’s company. From what I gather, most of the resentment was on Florence’s side. Harry had an important position that kept him busy, while his wife, though she had a graduate degree in history, worked part-time at Letter Perfect, an office-supply store on Jefferson Street. She was also active in the Friends of Sharon Malloy and in the Presbyterian church. She was about forty-five, a tall woman with a slight moustache and gray hair.
What happened was quite simple. Early on Halloween Harry left the house, saying he had to go over some papers with Frank Armstrong, the assistant principal. Because of her connection with the Friends of Sharon Malloy, Florence Martini heard about Meg’s disappearance early, around eleven o’clock. She immediately called Frank’s house to speak to her husband and learned from Frank’s wife that Harry had not been there all evening. When Harry returned home an hour later, his wife asked where he had been. He said he had been at Frank Armstrong’s, and Florence accused him of lying. I can almost see Harry’s expression when she told him this, a sort of superior pout that I have observed many times. Florence demanded to know where Harry had been and Harry refused to tell her. The next morning at the Friends of Sharon Malloy, Florence confessed that her husband had been gone the previous evening and that he refused to say where he had been.
This may have been disingenuous. Several people claimed that Florence knew perfectly well where her Harry had been and that she arranged the whole scene in order to embarrass him. In any case, she told Paul Leimbach and Donald Malloy that her husband had been missing the previous evening and that he had been acting strangely ever since Sharon had disappeared.
Instead of contacting the police, Donald and two other members of the group drove to the school to talk to Harry. I saw them arrive around eleven but I thought nothing of it, nor did anyone else, for that matter. They were in his office with the door shut. Apparently Harry refused to tell them where he had been the previous evening. Then they asked him where he had been when Sharon disappeared. As I have said, Donald Malloy is a large man, quite stout, and he leaned across Harry’s desk in a threatening manner. All this I heard later. As it turned out, Harry had also been absent on the day that Sharon disappeared. Supposedly he had been at a conference in Utica.
I saw Harry later that day and I must say that he looked very drawn and pale. There was to be a faculty meeting that afternoon but Harry canceled it. I believe he left early.
When I got to school Thursday morning, I felt certain that Harry wouldn’t show up. But I was wrong. It was typical of him that he never did what he should do and too often did what he shouldn’t. This was true of him even as a child. He quite bullied the community with his overinflated spelling abilities and his tiresome questions at the bank and the supermarket. Who cared if he could spell pachyderm? In any case, Harry went into his office and locked the door, telling Mrs. Miller that he didn’t want to see anyone or to receive any calls. That was at eight-thirty.
At ten-thirty Peter Marcos, the young lieutenant who had been brought down as Captain Percy’s assistant, arrived at the school with three other men. In Albany Marcos was often assigned to the governor and he had not yet decided whether Aurelius was a step up or a step down, so he was eager to do well. Certainly he wanted it to be a step up. Ten minutes later he took Harry away.
It was a habit of Harry’s—more of a trademark—to wear a flower in his lapel, usually a carnation. During the break between classes after Harry’s departure, the carnation was found in the main hall. It was kicked around for a while, then little Tommy Onetti retrieved it and tried to sell it. He couldn’t find a buyer so he ended up wearing it himself for the rest of the day, a slightly bent and soiled pink carnation.
Mrs. Miller said Harry was weeping when he was taken away and at least ten other people told me the same thing. By lunchtime everybody knew that the police had arrested Harry and that he had been in tears, while several claimed he had been in handcuffs, which was false, and several others said he had admitted to abducting Sharon Malloy and Meg Shiller.
Of course, Harry had done nothing of the kind. Ryan Tavich told Franklin what happened:
“Martini was brought in here bawling his eyes out. Marcos took him in to Captain Percy. I went as well. Before Percy could ask him a question, Martini began blabbing this complicated story about some woman he’d met in Utica and how she’d driven down and was staying at Gillian’s Motel. He said how she loved him, how she understood him, and how his whole life was ruined. It was hard to make head or tail of it. I’ve got to say that Percy was patient. Anyway, it was clear what Martini was doing all evening—balling some lady teacher from Utica. I’ll bet ten bucks his wife knew exactly what was going on, knew it even when she called Armstrong on Halloween.”
The news that Harry Martini had nothing to do with Meg’s disappearance took longer to circulate than the news that he was a suspect. When he returned to school around two o’clock the same afternoon, several students who encountered him in the hall panicked and ran the other way. This response was not confined to the school. Questions were asked at the school board meeting, the PTA, and the city council. Were the children safe with Harry as principal? There was talk that he might be suspended, though I think this was exaggerated. Clearly, he would have been in less trouble had he confessed at the beginning to spending his time with a lady from Utica. Then, the next week, when Harry’s supposed involvement with the disappearances was beginning to be forgotten, his wife filed for divorce.
But it was even more complicated. As I’ve said, I received a certain attention as a single middle-aged man who appeared to have an interest in adolescent girls. Well, I felt glad when Harry was suspected because it drew attention away from me. To be sure, I felt guilty about this. I have never liked Harry. He is silly and officious and he struts like a rooster, but the fact that I was glad he was suffering, that people were looking in his direction and not in mine, made me feel terrible. And I’m convinced that others, secretly, felt the same way.
Two other incidents should be briefly mentioned. On Monday morning, November 6, Tom Schneider showed up at police headquarters and asked to be arrested. Schneider owned a Mobil station at the edge of town. He claimed to be a pervert and wanted to be put in jail, though he said he had nothing to do with the disappearances of Sharon and Meg. But it was clear he expected to be blamed. Schneider said he’d had sex with his two children, both in their early teens. He said that his wife knew and that he was confessing because she had threatened to report him if he didn’t. He said she also suspected him of having something to do with Sharon Malloy and Meg Shiller, but he swore he’d had nothing to do with them.
Ryan talked to Schneider’s wife and two children. He talked to Schneider’s neighbors and family doctor, and the result was that Schneider was charged with a number of counts of incest and sexual abuse. He was in jail for several days, then released on bail. Apparently he hired someone to run the Mobil station and he himself received permission to stay in Utica or Rome—I’m not sure which—until the trial date. Even though there was no evidence, people suggested he might also have been involved with Sharon and Meg. A week after Schneider was charged, someone smashed the windows of his gas station and knocked over one of the pumps. The next day the man whom Schneider had hired to run the station put plywood over the windows and closed the station. Not long after, someone wrote “Sex Maniac” on the plywood with red spray paint. No one bothered to remove it.
The second incident concerned Billy Perkins, a local drunk who lived on a small check from the Veterans Administration. Two days after Schneider turned himself in, Perkins showed up at police headquarters. He was frightened. He had been drunk on Halloween night. Several young men told him that he had probably killed Meg Shiller but Billy had no memory one way or the other. Once he had killed a dog when he had been drunk and this still haunted him. Billy asked to be locked up. He was afraid if he went out on the streets he would be beaten, even killed, by the Friends of Sharon Malloy.
My cousin was one of two policemen assigned to discover Billy’s whereabouts on Halloween. They learned that he had bought a bottle of Old Duke at the liquor store around six in the evening. They talked to the two men he shared it with, who had bought two more. His landlord, Pat O’Shay, said Billy had returned to his room around midnight. He had been singing military songs. The landlord told Chuck that Billy often did this. On Halloween night the landlord had asked Billy to shut up. Billy had been apologetic and went quickly to bed.
Pat O’Shay said, “He’s a wreck but he’s a nice guy.”
Billy agreed to go into a treatment center in Syracuse. He had been there before, but maybe this time would be different. Actually, Ryan wanted to get Billy out of town. It was clear that Billy had nothing to do with Sharon or Meg, but in the eyes of some people he was still a potential suspect and he might be in danger. It was the suspicion again, the fact that people were frightened and were eager to find someone to blame for the disappearances. But now I have gotten too far ahead of myself.
Thirty
When Ryan came upon the snow-covered body of Houari Chihani, he could imagine what had happened. He could see that someone had used a baseball bat on the Citroën and he knew that earlier in the evening Hark and his cronies had been playing mailbox baseball out in the country. Ryan guessed the Citroën had been hit about thirty times. He felt a swelling of rage toward Hark and he wanted to smash him and his friends as they had smashed the little red car.
Irving Powell stood in the driveway. “Can I go now?” he asked. He had put the chocolate Lab on a leash and he held Chihani’s beret in his left hand. Sticking from under Powell’s overcoat were blue striped pajama bottoms. He was a man in his fifties who had lived in the neighborhood all his life.
“Of course not,” snapped Ryan, “you’re part of a murder investigation.” Then he relented. “Go home, put some clothes on, then come back right away. And leave your dog at home.”
John Farulli was on the desk. Ryan told him that it looked like Chihani had been murdered. Ryan knew that Chief Schmidt would be called and all the police machinery set in motion. The street would be sealed off. People would be questioned and arrest warrants prepared. And because nearly every cop in the county was searching for Meg Shiller, Ryan would be shorthanded.
Soon the police began to arrive. In the hours that followed, three Halloween masks were found: a black mask with a moustache, a broken Mickey Mouse mask, and a green grasshopper mask. A Mets baseball cap turned up, as well as Chihani’s cane. The police also collected six Budweiser bottles, two half full. The snow in the yard was crisscrossed with footprints. The neighbors across the street—Mrs. Morotti and James Pejewski—said they had called the police the previous evening. They described how some men had smashed the Citroën with baseball bats. They were unable to identify Jeb Hendricks’s Chevy Blazer precisely but said it was a red four-wheel-drive vehicle.
“It didn’t have a windshield,” said James Pejewski. “I couldn’t get over it. Those guys must have been cold.”
There were about ten policemen involved in talking to neighbors and searching Chihani’s yard. Mrs. Morotti made them coffee. “Be careful,” she kept saying, “it’s very hot.”
Franklin Moore arrived just as two attendants were lifting Chihani’s body onto a stretcher. The ambulance would take him to Potterville for the county coroner to do the autopsy. Like Ryan and the other policemen, Franklin had been up all night but he had managed to shave. While the policemen looked gray, with circles under their eyes, Franklin looked fresh and eager. He wore his old sheepskin coat and his striped scarf.
“How’s Sadie?” asked Ryan.
“I just drove her to school. She’s all right—a little dazed. What happened here?”
They were standing by the ambulance sipping coffee from blue ceramic mugs. Mrs. Morotti had said a dozen times that she wanted all her mugs back and she even put a policeman, Henry Swender, in charge of retrieving them.
“Hark Powers showed up here with his friends and smashed up Chihani’s Citroën,” said Ryan. “Chihani probably came out to protest, and so they smashed him up as well.”
“Have they been arrested?” asked Franklin. He was already taking notes.
“They’re not going anywhere,” said Ryan. “I’ll get them soon.” It occurred to Ryan that Chihani’s murder gave him even more reason to pick up Aaron and the members of IIR. He could question them about Hark and Meg Shiller at the same time.
Just then a white panel truck from Channel 9 in Syracuse turned the corner onto Maple Street, followed by a truck from Channel 5. Both were driving fast.
“You’re going to be well covered,” said Franklin. “They’re all here because of Meg.”
Ryan was already walking toward a police car. “Schmidt can deal with it,” he said over his shoulder. “I can’t
stand talking to those people.”
—
Ryan felt certain he knew who had been with Hark and that the red four-wheel-drive vehicle was a Chevy Blazer belonging to Jeb Hendricks. Ryan sent two men to Midas Muffler to arrest him. Then he sent two more to Henderson’s Plumbing and Heating for Ernie Corelli and two more to Knox Consolidated to arrest Jimmy Feldman. He also asked that Aaron be brought into headquarters, along with Barry, Harriet, Leon, and Jesse and Shannon Levine. He made it clear that none of the IIR members were being picked up because of Meg’s disappearance, which wasn’t quite true.
As for Hark, Ryan drove over to Jack Morris Ford to get him. He didn’t think to take anyone along. People were busy and Ryan didn’t want to make extra trouble. Anyway, he wanted to clear up this business before the state police interfered.
It had stopped snowing and the sun was out. Ryan doubted there would be snow left on the ground by evening, except maybe in a few places under the trees. Right now the snow seemed to be steaming as he drove across town. It was bright and he put on his sunglasses. As he often did, he took a detour down Hamilton Street—it was only two blocks out of his way—to drive past the house where Janice McNeal had lived: a small two-story red brick house with a white porch. Janice had been murdered exactly two years ago. The anniversary had been two weeks earlier, October 16. Ryan had sat by himself in his living room listening to Billie Holiday and getting drunk on Jack Daniel’s. He’d had a fire in the fireplace. All the next day he had cursed himself for being a sentimental idiot, but he didn’t mind being sentimental.
Janice’s house had stood empty for a year. Then it had been bought by an engineer from Kingston who had a wife and three young children. As Ryan drove by, he saw there was already a snow fort in the front yard and two blue plastic sleds. He glanced up at what had been Janice’s bedroom window and saw orange paper pumpkins on each of the windowpanes. He and Janice had had sex in every room in the house, including the attic and the basement. They had even done it in the backyard. And that was probably true of other men as well. Ryan knew for a fact that she sometimes had two lovers in a single day. Heck, she had probably had half a dozen. He banged his fist on the steering wheel, inadvertently honking the horn. He told himself that he wouldn’t drive down Hamilton Street again. It was something he had told himself before. In his rearview mirror he watched the house and the blue plastic sleds get smaller.
The Church of Dead Girls Page 26