Stone Cold Dead

by James W. Ziskin

  Once the convulsions had subsided, and I had wiped my mouth and nose with a wad of tissue, I collapsed against the wall of the toilet and closed my eyes. A gentle hand stroked my head, and I heard a soft voice comforting me. I opened my eyes and turned to see my savior: a pretty girl with green eyes and dark hair, pulled back on both sides by tortoiseshell barrettes, leaving long bangs hanging down to her eyebrows in front. She was about fourteen or fifteen, with red lips and a pink nose from the cold weather. She smiled at me, and that’s when I saw the silver braces on her teeth and the black chewing gum sticking fast to them like a thick tar.

  “Are you okay now?” she asked. I nodded. “I sent my friends to get the nurse. Can you stand up?”

  “Just help me to the sink,” I said. “I want to splash some cold water on my face.”

  The young girl lifted me off the floor and guided me to the bank of washbasins where she released me and let me fly solo. Grasping the porcelain sink with both hands to steady myself, I examined my reflection in the mirror. I looked away; didn’t want to throw up again. I dug into my purse, looking for a comb, and removed the pint of Dewar’s and placed it on the edge of the sink. Then I pulled out a lipstick, a package of gum (Doublemint), and my Leica, before I finally located the comb at the bottom.

  “I have to go now,” said the girl. “The nurse will be here soon.”

  I washed my face and slipped a stick of gum into my mouth. A few minutes later, I had combed my unruly hair and painted my lips. I was presentable, if somewhat green. Repacking my purse, I realized the bottle of whiskey had vanished.

  The kindly nurse, Mrs. Golnik, and the faculty chaperone, Miss Barnett (one of the girls’ gym teachers), escorted me to the infirmary. Mrs. Golnik clopped down the corridor in her sturdy heels, supporting my left elbow, while Miss Barnett squeaked along in sneakers and a Jack LaLanne jumpsuit, holding my right. To complete my embarrassment, the assistant principal, Mr. Brossard, arrived to investigate the incident. I assured them I was fine to see myself home, but they insisted I call someone to pick me up. Since it was Friday, I knew Fadge would be up to his fat elbows in the usual ice cream, hot fudge, and egg creams, so he was out of the running. I dreaded calling Charlie Reese. His wife, Edith, always sounded put out when I phoned, and, all things being equal, I preferred to keep my boss in the dark about my more spectacular bouts of public disgrace.

  “I’m fine now, really,” I said, giving it one last try. “I can drive myself home.”

  Miss Barnett volunteered to accompany me, but she was a bit too keen and transparent in her motivation. Mrs. Golnik stood before me, flashed a light into my eyes, then grasped my jaw firmly in her right hand and cocked my head upward to examine my pallor. She flattened the back of her fingers against my forehead to gauge my temperature, then frowned, gave a curt shake of her head, and said no. Mr. Brossard, a stocky man in his mid-thirties, considered the options from a few feet away. He stood there squarely in a plain brown suit and wingtip shoes, arms crossed over his ribs, legs splayed just beyond their normal stance, like a football coach watching his charges practice.

  “You don’t look well, miss,” he said finally. “We can’t let you leave by yourself.”

  “Ellie?” a voice called from the doorway. “I thought I saw you. What are you doing here?”

  Stan Pulaski: deputy sheriff, ardent admirer, and my hero. Thank God. Stan would drive me home and probably pay me a few compliments on the way, too. “Gee, Ellie, your hair looks nice with sick in it.”

  Mrs. Golnik and Mr. Brossard were satisfied with my escort and gave me their blessing to go. Miss Barnett sighed as I took my leave.

  Stan drove me home in his cruiser and helped me up the stairs. My landlady, Mrs. Giannetti, witnessed the whole thing, and I heard all about it the next day.

  “What were the charges, dear? Well, at least you were completely dressed.”

  I wanted to invite Stan in for a coffee, but I felt like vomiting again, and he was on duty besides. He left me at my kitchen door, bowing and replacing the cap on his head.

  Fadge nudged me from my thoughts. “Anyone home?”

  “Sorry,” I said, putting the memory aside. “Do you suppose that girl was actually Darleen Hicks?”

  “Kind of a long shot, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe. But she was chewing that awful gum. About the right age . . .”

  “Wasn’t that after she disappeared?” asked Fadge.

  I shook my head. “No, the basketball game was the sixteenth, a Friday. Darleen Hicks disappeared on Wednesday the twenty-first.”

  “Could have been, then,” shrugged Fadge.

  “Wait a minute. Her mother left me a photograph.”

  I jumped from the sofa and scooted to the kitchen, where I grabbed the envelope and pulled out the picture. A teenage girl, smiling, with hair falling off her shoulder. There was something impish in her eyes. Just a bit naughty perhaps. Her lips were open just so, and you could detect the braces underneath. She was pretty. And she was the girl who’d held my hair and stolen my whiskey.

  MONDAY, JANUARY 2, 1961

  My New Year’s lethargy flowed into the next day. I was still on the sofa, still wrapped in my robe, watching the Rose Bowl and working my way to the bottom of a bowl of Chex Mix. Okay, to be honest, it was just some stale Wheat Chex cereal from the box. No nuts, no pretzels, just cereal. I love football, but even I realized that any self-respecting fan should have already showered, breakfasted, and dressed for the game. Down from the highs of my New Year’s revelry with Eddie Robeleski, and sullenly aware of the letter I was avoiding, I felt deflated and withered, filled with selfreproach for wasting another day doing nothing. And still I had no spark to drag myself to the bath. Then something strange happened.

  Washington was leading Minnesota 17–0 at the half. I watched with eyes half shut as the Huskies’ cheerleaders began to lead a typical flip-card routine with their fans on the Washington side. Black-and-white squares spelling out inanities for the edification of the opposite side of the stadium and the national TV audience. I was about to take a snooze when I noticed the Washington student section was holding up some kind of funnylooking, bucktoothed creature. Looked like a beaver. Then, on command, they flipped their cards and spelled out “SEIKSUH,” Huskies spelled backwards. (I’m quick with anagrams and word puzzles.) The roaring crowd seemed to lose some of its volume, no doubt thrown off stride by the funny beaver and the backward spelling. But the next stunt silenced everyone inside the Rose Bowl, including the television announcers, Mel Allen and Chick Hearn. For some obscure reason, the Washington fans were showing their school pride by spelling out “CALTECH” for all the world to see.

  I sat up, confused at first, leaned closer to the set to see better, then burst out laughing. Caltech didn’t even have a football team, but they had just won the Rose Bowl. The prank lifted the fog I’d been under since I’d sent Eddie Robeleski packing New Year’s Eve. Skipping the second half (Washington won 17–7), I showered and dressed in a hurry. It was a Monday, after all, even if it was a holiday. If a gang of Caltech eggheads could infiltrate the Rose Bowl and steal the halftime show on national television, I could get off my duff and start asking some questions.

  CHAPTER THREE

  My company car, a 1955 red-and-black Dodge Royal Lancer, sat cockeyed in the street in front of my apartment, its right front tire mashed against the curb, where it had skidded to a stop New Year’s Eve. Not my best parking effort. A glaze of frost, spotted like lichen on a rock, dappled the black hood, windshield, and roof. It was cold. A sunny, biting cold that sears your nostrils with every breath. Your mouth moves like a ventriloquist’s, as if you’ve been punched in the lip and shot full of Novocain. I jumped inside the car, praying it would start, and turned the key. Not always first at the post, the engine roared to life this day, eight cylinders thrumming under the hood as I pumped the gas pedal for encouragement. It took a full five minutes before the heat finally made some headway with the frost on the windshi
eld. The wipers swept a halfthawed patch of glass clear so I could see. I shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb, heading down Lincoln toward Market Street, where I turned south. At the bottom of the hill, past DeGroff’s TV and Radio Repair, the New Holland Hotel, and the Masonic Hall, the Mill Street Bridge spanned the Mohawk, connecting New Holland proper with its South Side. A steel truss affair, the gray bridge arched like a behemoth’s spine above the icy river fifty feet below. Like New Holland itself, the Mill Street Bridge was grim and industrial, form and function as one, with little thought for trimmings or frills.

  On the opposite end of the bridge, the Coezzens Broom Factory anchored the west side of Mill Street, and the Mueller Linseed Oil Company held down the east. I drove up the hill, past the armory and the home of a fellow with whom I’d had a brief, ill-fated fling two years earlier. His mother didn’t appreciate the finer points of my “Jewiness,” to use her word, and my forward behavior eventually proved too much for his conservative sensibilities. He broke it off via telegram. Funny how guilty he felt after the sin, not while we were breaking the commandments (number seven, in particular). It was just as well; as sinners go, he was fairly passive. A girl doesn’t want to do all the heavy lifting herself.

  At the top of the hill, I turned west on Route 5S, heading toward the open farmland of the Town of Florida. My first stop was a gray clapboard house, set back about a hundred yards from the road on a solitary stretch of County Highway 58. A fine powder of dry snow had blown into the road, stretching its long fingers to reach the other side. You could see the wind at play in the drifts, sculpting and brushing its handiwork in the bitter cold. The gentle hills, lit by a low winter’s sun, spread out for miles to the west, buried in white from the recent snowfalls. A dented tin mailbox on the side of the road read “W. Rasmussen.” Beside that stood a Republic newspaper box, leaning to the side about thirty degrees short of perpendicular.

  I turned into the narrow drive, tires crunching over packed snow and gravel, and approached the gray house. A giant man in coveralls, work boots, and a red-checked hunting jacket emerged from the adjacent barn before I’d even reached the house, as if he’d been standing sentry, waiting to ward off trespassers. Fresh from some heavy exertion in the barn, the big man glared at me as I climbed out of the car. Steam rose from his ruddy head, shorn close to the skin like a spring sheep. He looked to be in his sixties or seventies. He was at least six feet eight and burly, easily three hundred pounds: the biggest man I’d ever seen. A small, bloody ax dangled from his right hand. I nearly lost my nerve, but I’d come this far.

  “Well?” he said, as I pulled my wool overcoat tight about my neck. The late-afternoon sun was blazing behind him, and I squinted through the glare to see him.

  “Mr. Rasmussen?” I asked, eyes fixed on the ax. No response. Just a frozen, iron face staring back at me. “My name is Ellie Stone. I’m a reporter with the Republic.”

  Still no reaction.

  “I see you’re a subscriber,” I continued, referring to the newspaper box I’d seen at the head of the drive.

  “I don’t much like the idea of girl reporters,” he said. “What do you want?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I hope you won’t cancel the paper over it.”

  “What do you want?” he repeated.

  “I came to ask you about Darleen Hicks.”

  “Who?”

  “Darleen Hicks,” I repeated. “Dick Metzger’s daughter.”

  Rasmussen sauntered over to the porch where he stood before a frozen tree stump. He flipped the ax into the air like a juggler, catching it again by the handle once it had completed a single rotation. If he wanted to intimidate me, he’d succeeded.

  “Why ask me?”

  “She disappeared two weeks ago. Do you know anything about her?”

  “Nothing,” he said, weighing the ax in his hand.

  “Never met her?” I asked, trembling as much from the cold as from fear. My God, I wanted to run. “Never laid eyes on her?”

  “Sure, I seen her a couple of times,” he said. “Couldn’t describe her, though.”

  “Have you seen her recently? Maybe with someone else? A boy? A man?”

  He shook his head.

  “Do you have any family here, Mr. Rasmussen?”

  “My wife died eight years ago.”

  “You don’t have any children?”

  He shook his head once, then took a step toward me. His huge, windburned face twisted quizzically. “Are you that girl reporter who wrote about Judge Shaw’s daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  He considered my answer for a moment then repeated that he didn’t like the idea of girl reporters.

  I didn’t know exactly how to respond to that, so I asked him about his dispute with Dick Metzger. Rasmussen cocked his head to one side.

  “So I’m supposed to have killed his daughter ’cause he put a fence a couple of feet on my property?”

  “Who said she was dead?”

  Rasmussen clapped the ax into the frozen stump with a sharp chop. He glared at me, eyes smoldering. Clearly he was not used to girls talking to him this way.

  “I mean, why do you think she’s dead?”

  “She’s been missing without a word for two weeks,” he said. “She’s dead, and you know it, too. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think I had something to do with it.”

  “What’s in the barn?” I asked, marveling at my audacity. This guy had a bloody ax, for God’s sake.

  “What’s that?” he asked, easily as surprised as I by my effrontery.

  “You came out of the barn with a bloody ax in your hand. I was wondering what you were doing in there.”

  “You come snooping around on my property uninvited, accusing me of killing a little girl . . .” He shook his head woefully. “Why don’t you go home and bake some cupcakes?”

  “Thank you for your time, Mr. Rasmussen,” I said, my breath freezing in the sunny air.

  “You’ll leave my property now.”

  In the rearview mirror, I could see the giant man watching me from the porch until I’d turned back onto 58 and lost sight of him.

  A half mile farther down the road, I rolled to a stop at a rusting mailbox. The name “Metzger” was stenciled on the side in rough block letters. I sat inside the car staring up the long, unpaved drive. The house was not visible from the road, hidden by a small hill and tall trees. The sun was still hovering over the horizon to the west, but I was parked in near darkness. I could feel the outside temperature dropping along with the waning daylight. The exhaust from my Royal Lancer billowed white in the air, rode forward on the wind, passing over the entire car, and scattered somewhere beyond the nose of the long black hood.

  This was where Darleen Hicks had waited for the school bus, where she had climbed aboard for the last time on December 21. I made a mental note to find the driver and interview him about that day. Why had Darleen missed the bus that afternoon? Maybe he would know something.

  For now, though, I wanted to meet the other neighbors: the Karls. Their house was another three-quarters of a mile past Dick and Irene Metzger’s farm. It was dark when I turned down the road that led to their place. Another weathered, blistered clapboard farmhouse, this one a pale blue color. Languishing half buried in the snow, the carcasses of three fossilized vehicles—a long-dead tractor and two old pickups—welcomed visitors. No Negro lawn jockeys here. The leaning porch was stacked on one side with fragments of old, busted furniture—wooden chairs, a dilapidated table, a disemboweled sofa, and a couple of galvanized steel tubs, dented and filled with rags—and at least two cords of firewood, neatly stacked, on the other. A Town & Country cover photo.

  I pulled the handbrake and switched off the engine. A biting wind whipped over the landscape, carrying waves of fine, fallen snow to new destinations. I popped open the door and felt the cold rush under my overcoat. Climbing out of the car, I pulled my coat tight and hurried toward the porch. I slipped and skinned my knee.
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  “Are you lost?” a voice called through the raw wind. I looked up from my bleeding knee to see a man standing in the warmly lit doorway of the house, between the woodpile and the broken furniture. Dressed in a red waffle-knit thermal undershirt and overalls, bib and brace unhitched and hanging from his waist, he studied me deliberately. He looked to be about sixty.

  I shook my head, pushed up off the ground, and brushed my knee clean. The stocking was ripped clear through.

  “Sorry for the intrusion,” I said. “I wanted to ask you some questions about Darleen Hicks.”

  The man frowned, rubbed his stubbled chin, then waved me toward him. “Come on in,” he said, “before you catch your death. We’ll clean up that knee, too.”

  The house was warm, almost steaming. A potbellied stove blazed in the sitting room, and the oven was belching heat in the kitchen where he led me. There, a thick, gray-haired woman of about fifty or fifty-five was stirring some meat stew and boiled potatoes on the stove. She looked surprised to see me. A man in his mid-twenties gazed up at me from the table. His greasy hair, cut down almost to the scalp on the sides of his head, had been chopped coarsely, as if by hedge sheers on the top. He smiled a crooked-toothed grin at me but didn’t get off his duff to say hello.