The Judgment

by William J. Coughlin

  By the time Sue finished telling the story, we were on Copper Creek Road and close to the crime scene. She had had it only in fragments she’d heard from the radio dispatcher, then direct from Officer Majeski before she headed out to my place. But it seemed to do her good to tell it to me. She was less distraught and more professional in manner, apparently ready to meet what lay ahead. I only hoped that I was, too.

  There was a cop stationed in the road to direct traffic around the line of patrol cars on the right. He stopped us with his flashlight, then walked up when he recognized the county plate on our car.

  When he stuck his head in the window, I recognized him, more or less, but couldn’t come up with his name.

  “Yeah, hi, Sue. Just pull in behind my car there.”

  She nodded and mumbled a few words I didn’t catch.

  “We kept a clean scene for you this time,” he said. “I guess we’re learning the hard way.”

  A swirl of snow swept into the car before she could get the window up. She guided her car into the spot to which she’d been directed, then cut the motor and killed the lights.

  “Stay close to me, Charley, unless I tell you different,” she said, now the complete professional.

  “Fair enough,” I agreed.

  I followed in her footsteps, shuffling through the soft snow. There was a wet hard pack beneath it. All told, I thought about three inches had fallen. The temperature had dropped steadily, and it had to be well down in the twenties. I was glad I’d worn my snow boots and remembered my new gloves.

  Emergency lights running off the generators of two of the patrol cars were pointed at a mound in the snow beyond the yellow tape. There was a slight glint on the plastic and an indication of flesh color beneath it where the face would be. If they left the corpse undisturbed, it would be only a matter of minutes until it would be invisible beneath the snow. There was just one set of footprints leading up to the mound.

  “All right,” said Sue, “who was it just had to take a look? Who tracked up there to the body?”

  “It was me.” The cop’s name was Bert Bossey. I knew him from a trial a year ago, a tough, no-nonsense police officer. He stepped forward to face her. “We were the first on the scene. Steve Majeski found the body; because I was senior officer, I took charge.”

  “Did that mean you had to mess things up like that?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Sue, I had to see if the kid was dead.”

  “You satisfied that he is?”

  “Yeah, I cut into the plastic, felt for a pulse and didn’t get any, then I tried for a heartbeat. Nothing.”

  All the cops were edgy because they were tired. They’d been out a long time, and the effort they’d put in patrolling the roads had gone for nothing. And the proof of that was before them right there under the lights.

  “Larry?” she called out. “Are you here?”

  Larry Antonovich came forward, a camera in hand. Sue took him over to one side. The two detectives held a hurried conference in whispers. One or two of the cops, those who recognized me, looked at me curiously, all but asking out loud what I was doing there.

  As they talked on, flashing lights down the road caught my eye. The cops saw it, too, but barely glanced up. It was all part of the routine. It was moving along from the direction we had come at a speed so deliberate that the flashing lights in the rack on the roof seemed altogether unnecessary. It looked like an ambulance, but it turned out to be the county coroner’s van from Pickeral Point. Identification was emblazoned in big letters on the side.

  They pulled up on the highway just opposite the yellow tape, and there they waited, motor running. The window came down on the passenger’s side.

  “How long?” came the call from inside.

  “Not long,” Sue called back.

  The window rolled back up. The snow had slacked off, nearly stopped. Sue took a deep breath, led Antonovich to the tape, and ducked under, approaching the body from one side. Did she intend that I should accompany her? She must have remembered me at the last moment, for she looked back and made a quick gesture that told me to stay where I was. Antonovich ducked under. I noticed that in addition to the camera, he had something that looked like a screen under his arm, about a foot-and-a-half square.

  He began taking pictures, circling the mound, getting it from every angle. Sue produced a carpenter’s tape from her coat pocket and called over one of the cops, telling him to measure from the edge of the road. She took it to the mound and noted the figure in a notebook, all business but not a glance at the small window left uncovered by the snow. When Antonovich had finished that round of picture taking, she carefully scooped the snow from the plastic wrap and placed it on the screen, yet doing it in such a way that her eyes never seemed to leave her hands. She stepped away and sifted the snow through the screen. Nothing stuck; it was all snow and nothing more. Antonovich took more pictures. Then Sue beckoned in the direction óf the county coroner’s van, and the two inside got out, opened up the back, and pulled out a stretcher.

  They weren’t so careful once they’d stepped inside the perimeter. Sue warned them away from the direct route and made them take the circular way that she and Larry Antonovich had taken. In any case, the body was shifted onto the stretcher and moved in less than a minute. Somehow she managed to be looking the other way through it all. More pictures of the spot where the body had lain, then they both went to work sifting through the snow beneath the resting place and all around it—again, nothing, nothing but snow. Finished, they left a marker, and returned the long way around.

  “Steve Majeski?” Sue called. “I need to get a statement from you.”

  She produced a small hand-held tape recorder from that voluminous coat pocket and talked him through the chase from this point to Beulah Road, a good three miles, and she wanted all the details.

  Sue was doing pretty well through this ordeal she had dreaded. She recovered well after a bad start by admitting her error to the cops assembled at the scene. Whatever help she supposed I might provide was unneeded.

  How was I doing? Not quite so well.

  Standing by myself, off to one side, I had looked on, not so much with interest but with fascination. Every time Sue turned away from that mound nearly covered by snow, I found myself staring at it. I wasn’t even sure of the contents of that plastic-wrapped package. I hadn’t heard whether it was a boy or a girl inside, only that it was a child. Another child, the fourth in this monstrous chain of killings. It had to be a kind of monster responsible, didn’t it? There was such a confusion of purpose evident: the care taken with the bodies, clothes washed, the plastic shroud to protect each one from the snow. Yes, the snow. What did that mean? Clearly, it meant a great deal to the murderer. What was the snow symbolizing? Purity? Theirs, not his? How could you get into such a mind to even begin to guess what went on there?

  I thought I’d distanced myself pretty well from the county coroner’s team as they returned with the small body on the stretcher. Yet as they came, the cops seemed to drift away, leaving me alone, the only one within calling distance when they cleared the yellow tape.

  Me? I was staring in spite of myself.

  “Hey buddy, want to give us a hand here? Come on over and open the door to the van.”

  I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t say, “Get one of those cops to help you—they’ve seen more death than I have, more than I ever want to.” No, I couldn’t say that, so I nodded and went to help.

  It was a boy. Dark haired and darker skinned than was usual in this county of Slavs, Scandinavians, and Celtics. His features suggested he might have a bit of Indian blood. Though his eyes were shut, his mouth was stern. He looked angry. I’ll bet he’d put up a fight.

  I walked away. My vision was blurred. Hell, who am I kidding? I was half blind from the tears that wouldn’t stop. I wiped at them, then more sobs came and more tears. So I just kept walking, trying to get away. I heard the county coroner’s van turn around in the road and start on its tr
ip back. Finally, I was surprised when I heard Sue’s voice calling me back, not so much that she called but that her voice was so distant. I turned around and saw that I was a good city block away.

  “Charley,” she called. “Where are you? Charley!”

  She must have lost me in the darkness. I cleared my throat and yelled back as loudly as I was able, “I’m here. I’m coming, I’m coming.”

  On the drive back to Pickeral Point, neither Sue nor Larry Antonovich said a word about my disappearance. Not much was said at all. But I had a question.

  “Who was the boy?”

  “We don’t know yet,” said Sue.

  “No missing child reported? What did Hub City have to say?”

  “Nothing there. We just don’t know.”

  “Strange.”

  Yes, it was strange. Could the boy have been picked off the streets of Detroit? Port Huron? Mt. Clemens? Wherever he had come from, he had parents who missed him, lost him, who were frantic to find him. The dead boy in plastic wrap on the stretcher looked like he was about the same age as the first three victims. He couldn’t have been a runaway, not likely at that age.

  When we came to Pickeral Point, Sue headed for Kerry County Police Headquarters. Larry Antonovich was to be dropped off there. He had been driving up and down Beulah Road with one of the two cars assigned to that stretch. The idea was to have one detective rolling and Sue back at headquarters to coordinate things. He was young, from Detroit, and had gone to Wayne State.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice,” he said to Sue, “if we had a crime-scene squad like a big grown-up police department?”

  “Not likely,” said Sue, “with all the budget cuts.”

  “I hope these pictures I took come out. You think there was enough light out there?”

  “You’d know that better than I would, Larry. I’m no photographer.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “They’ll be okay, I guess.”

  She pulled up in the lot, which was nearly empty by now, well after midnight. Antonovich got out, taking his camera equipment with him.

  “I’ll leave the film with a note before I go. If George Bester gets right on it, the roll should be printed by mid-morning.”

  “Do that. I’ll be back by eleven. We’ll go to the location on Copper Creek Road then.” “I don’t envy you.”

  Sue drove out of the parking lot and turned in the direction of my place. She turned to me.

  “Charley, I was wondering …”

  I knew that approach, and I thought I knew what her request would be.

  “Sure, Sue, you can stay with me tonight.”

  “You really know me inside and out, don’t you?”

  “Let’s just say I know you pretty well by how.”

  We drove in silence for a block or two.

  “I got off on the wrong foot with the cops, didn’t I? Of course Bossey was right. He had to make sure the kid was dead.”

  “But you handled it right from then on.”

  “There’s a few things different about this one, you know.”

  “Well, for one thing,” I said, “no report of a missing child. You don’t know who the kid is.”

  “Right, but finding him on Copper Creek Road is sort of odd—miles from Hub City. The location was a lot closer to town, this town, than any of the others. And there was something else, too.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Larry said it looked like the kid’s clothes were dirty—not filthy or anything, just like he’d been out in the snow—his hands, too, the way kids get dirty playing anyplace. I didn’t see it myself. I made it a point not to look at the body.”

  “Yeah, I noticed.”

  She sighed. “Well, I got through it.”

  “Whatever works, Sue. You did fine.”

  “At least we know now what kind of car the killer has.”

  “Four-wheel drive.”

  “Dark color, black or maybe brown. I wonder how many of those there are in the county.”

  “Not an infinite number. It’s a place to start.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  My apartment building loomed ahead. Emotionally, rather than physically, I was exhausted. Perhaps, in a way, I felt even worse than I had that night on Clarion Road when little Catherine Quigley was found. But Í felt different. I had no wish to talk with Bob Williams about what it all meant, nor certainly with Sue Gillis. My problems with the Higher Power remained unsolved.

  Something struck me just then. “Larry said something when you dropped him off. He said he didn’t envy you. What did he mean?”

  “I have to go to the autopsy tomorrow morning,” she said, turning into my driveway. “It’s customary for an officer to be present. Since I’m heading the investigation now, it’s up to me.”

  It wasn’t until later, when we were in bed and I was close to sleep, that she asked me to go with her to the autopsy.

  “I don’t believe I was much help to you out there tonight,” I responded.

  “Yes you were. Just having you there meant everything to me.”

  Because she had to go to headquarters first, Sue left my apartment early the next morning. I was to meet her a little before nine at the entrance to the Kerry County Community Hospital. I was early, pacing before the doors of the place, and nervous, nervous, nervous. It wasn’t that I was afraid she’d be late or might not come—I would have been delighted if she hadn’t shown up. No, it was dissatisfaction with myself, annoyance that she had managed to persuade me to do something I certainly did not want to do, and fear of what lay ahead. If someone had come along and asked me what I felt right then and there, the only honest answer I could have given would have been anger.

  God knows I’m no wimp, in front of a judge and jury, I can breathe fire with the best of them. Yet when Sue began to plead over coffee, I found I simply couldn’t turn her down. I know now what the problem was. I couldn’t refuse her because I had made up my mind that we had to break up, that our romance had ended or that it would end when I sat down with her and explained why it was impossible. I felt certain she would be hurt by that, and so I had unconsciously decided to give her what she wanted until them As I look back, it seems that this all came about because I was determined to let her down easy.

  I had even agreed to keep that Thanksgiving dinner date with her parents that afternoon following all this. She had obtusely and stubbornly insisted that nothing was changed, that the date still stood, that following the autopsy and her return visit to the crime scene with Larry Antonovich, we would set off for Southfield. It was over the meadow and through the woods, and let’s be sure to get there on time. The woman had a Thanksgiving obsession.

  And so I paced angrily back and forth in front of the entrance to the hospital. It was chilly, rather than cold. Even, at this early hour the temperature had risen above freezing, and the bright sun had begun melting last night’s snowfall. By afternoon the streets and sidewalks would be a mess. By evening the snow would probably be gone entirely.

  Sue appeared, walking swiftly from the hospital parking lot. I hadn’t noticed the big Caprice make its entrance. Maybe it was in some special corner reserved for the police. She clipped up the two steps and gave me a nod and a faint smile.

  I opened the door for her.

  As she passed through, she said, “We’ve got an ID on the boy now.”

  “Who is it? Where’s he from?”

  I caught up with her, and we hurried along to the reception desk. She stopped there just long enough to inquire where the autopsy was to be held.

  “In the operating theater on the third floor,” said the receptionist. “But that’s not open to the public.”

  “I’m not the public,” said Sue, flashing her police ID.

  “What about him?” Meaning me.

  “He’s with me,” she called back. Already we were on our way to the elevator.

  As we waited, it took her about a minute to tell me that the victim’s name was Richard Fauret. He was the youngest in
a French-Canadian farming family from Copper Creek, an unincorporated area up in that empty northwest corner of the county. She said they were old-fashioned backwoods people who believed in taking care of their own problems, so they had searched for their Dickey, as they called him, for about three hours, maybe more, before they gave in and called the local police. The local police force in Clay ville, population just under a thousand, was comprised of three. There was some difficulty in communication because the father’s English was far from” perfect. Finally, the night-duty man decided that this just might have something to do with all those murders around Hub City, and he passed it on to the county police around midnight.

  “But the Faurets have seen their son?” I asked. “Made a positive identification?”

  “Yes, they were here about seven o’clock. I heard it was a pretty bad scene.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  Sue rushed me off the elevator. She seemed to know her way around the hospital pretty well, far better than I did, anyway. We turned to the right and scurried to a door about halfway down the hall. She opened it and pushed me inside.

  I was surprised to find it really was an operating theater. I expected something more on the order of what I had seen in my few brief visits to the morgue in Detroit—cold-box storage drawers, a slab, running water, scales, little more than that.

  This was something much grander.

  The door through which we entered was raised above the operating room by a number of feet to accommodate two rows of benches that ran around the floor in three sides of a rectangle. It wasn’t until we descended a few steps and took our places on the nearest bench that I saw we were separated from the operating room by a glass panel, which ran all the way around the room.

  Sue must have noticed my surprise at this elaborate setup, for she leaned toward me and whispered, “This hospital was built in the early Sixties by a surgeon who thought he was pretty hot stuff. He thought if he built a space like this, all southeastern Michigan would come and watch him perform.”