As a neighbor, though six blocks (six degrees?) removed, Dojcsak attended as a private citizen. He mingled among the mourners, as if by telepathy hoping to feel their pain. Dojcsak helped himself to refreshments; beer, mini-sausages, buns, assorted cold cuts, cheese cubes and sliced vegetables with some type of creamy dip that Dojcsak feared might upset his stomach.
Faces both familiar and not so familiar passed through his line of vision, reluctant to engage the County Sheriff in conversation. Understandable, he decided. What could they say? Any leads Ed? realizing even then the most reasonable suspects were here in the room with them. (Dojcsak wished Rena were here as a distraction, so as for him not to appear so conspicuous.)
Many of Missy’s friends had returned to school after the service, judiciously eschewing the Bitson home, while others used the funeral as an excuse to skip class. Only a few, of who Dojcsak assumed to be close friends, were present.
Stomach churning as he expected, Dojcsak helped himself to a third beer, loosened the knot in his necktie and ruminated on what might be a respectable time before leaving. It would be indelicate to initiate an interrogation here, and besides, Dojcsak lacked the enthusiasm. Across the room, Cassie McMaster pulled herself from a small knot of mourners, moving in Dojcsak’s direction like a battle ship, standing opposite him as if to speak.
Before she could, he said, “I’m sorry.”
“Why be sorry? You didn’t kill her.”
“Figure of speech. It was a fine service.”
She eyed his beer critically. “I’m glad you approve. It’s more difficult when it’s someone close. Harder to draw comfort from the words, to believe they’re anything but empty rhetoric, even when I’m delivering them myself.” Cassie’s dark hair was a sharp contrast to her pale skin. She was gaunt and drawn, but still an obviously attractive woman. “It’s the first time I’ve presided over the burial of a family member. Not much solace in that, almost enough to shake your faith in your chosen vocation. In fact, it’s enough to shake your faith in God.” Cassie smiled, irony rather than humor.
“Rena tells me you’ll bury our daughter.”
“Unless you have other plans.”
Dojcsak shrugged. “No,” he said. “No other plans; without a miracle, she’ll die.”
Cassie sipped from a glass of red wine. “And you, Sheriff?”
“Me, die? Eventually, yes, I suppose.”
“Faith, Sheriff, I was speaking of your faith. Is yours shaken by this?”
Dojcsak, presuming she was speaking of the murder, replied thoughtfully, “Well, for it to be shaken, I suppose I’d have had to have it in the first place.”
“A cynic.”
“A pragmatist, Reverend.”
“Call me Cassie. Only my parishioners refer to me as Reverend and to my knowledge, you don’t attend church.”
Dojcsak smiled. “As I say, I’m a pragmatist.”
“Without faith? No, Sheriff: that’s an optimist.”
“No; an optimist expects the best. When it doesn’t occur, he hopes for the best. I neither expect nor hope either way.”
“I hope you’re able to muster more conviction for the investigation of Missy’s killing, Sheriff. You don’t inspire great confidence.”
“Except for the obvious, my conviction has less to do with the outcome than chance, I’m afraid. The chance someone will come forward to tell us what they know; the chance we find a clue that points us to the killer; the chance he’ll confess. Who knows?”
Dojcsak shrugged his shoulders while aggressively massaging his cheeks. He hadn’t shaved since before the funeral service: without a razor, he seemed intent to rub the whiskers clean from his face with the palm of a calloused hand. Cassie noted this, putting it down to the unseasonable spring heat combined with what appeared to be a painful looking rash spread across the skin of the Sheriff’s jowls and lower jaw.
“The case is hopeless, then?”
Dojcsak lowered his voice to respond. “Not entirely. You do know the killer; how could you not? Someone Missy either trusted or knew. She had sex willingly; she was neither raped nor physically coerced. I’ve told this to your sister. She’s in a state of denial, I think.”
“Sara seems to believe it may have something to do with our cousin. Jordy, on Eugene’s side of the family.”
Dojcsak sipped his beer, draining the bottle. His eyes scanned the room, pausing a brief moment to focus on Jordy Bitson, drinking beer and who by now had removed his sport jacket and necktie. Dojcsak would not make an issue here, of the boy drinking underage. If his parents didn’t object, why should he?
“You’ve been speaking to Sara? About the case?”
Cassie blushed, her flushed skin a stark contrast to her snow-white collar. “She dropped by on the weekend, to ask specifically about some of the kids Missy knew. I told her Jordy was a bad one, that Missy and he had been close and that I didn’t approve.” Dojcsak eyed her skeptically. “That’s all, Sheriff.” Cassie became defensive. “She didn’t compromise your case, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I wasn’t, only that you failed to mention this to Christopher Burke; your concern over Jordy. You remember Christopher don’t you? Tall, good looking young kid? He spoke to you last Monday, on the day following the murder.”
“It was a crazy day, Sheriff. Obviously, I wasn’t thinking about reasonable suspects at the time.” Cassie was tempted to add: And since your Deputy seemed more preoccupied with my tits than his line of questioning, I wasn’t anxious for him to overstay his welcome.
Dojcsak said, “If you had mentioned it, you could have saved us all a lot of trouble and time.”
Lowering her voice, Cassie said, “Why? Is Jordy your only suspect?”
Dojcsak seemed to think before answering. Finally, he said, “Things are shaping up and Jordy is certainly a person of interest.”
“Not the same as being guilty, Sheriff.”
“Without an eyewitness, guilt is a matter of degree, not an absolute certainty.”
“I wouldn’t give a ducat for the boy’s prospects, but I’d hate to see him hang on a hunch.”
Dojcsak eyed her critically. “You’re being too harsh. You turned your life around, didn’t you, Reverend? Perhaps the boy is made of sterner stuff.”
Cassie acknowledged her own troubled youth, curious that Dojcsak had put himself in a position, now, of seeming to defend the boy. “Possibly he is,” she said. “But given his upbringing, I wouldn’t lay odds.”
“Speaking of which,” Dojcsak said, “how is your father?”
They drifted apart after a while, Cassie to Maggie, Dojcsak to the door. After a fourth beer, he decided it was reasonable for him to leave. Maggie Bitson appeared composed now though somehow empty, as if she would collapse inward if nudged by even a weak breeze. Eugene appeared to be recovering, somewhat stooped, but no tears, and Dojcsak had seen him even smile once or twice. Jordy Bitson worked a small crowd of teenagers like he was the guest of honor. Mandy Bitson followed in his wake. Kendra Bitson sat alone in a corner looking forlorn, as if having difficulty digesting her own black thoughts. The grandparents of Missy Bitson were not present, Leland returning to the dealership immediately upon leaving the church service, but not before securing for Helen a drive home.
Outside it was dark. It had begun to rain. Dojcsak gathered his coat collar around his neck, stepping carefully from the stoop to the front walk. The air was brisk, but Dojcsak had begun to sweat. His bulk felt heavy, as if too great a burden for his legs. Others left with him, starting their vehicles, igniting headlights, the glare from the rain-spattered sidewalk making it difficult for him to see. For the second time in a week, Dojcsak cursed his neglect, promising himself that tomorrow he would have Rena telephone the pharmacy to refill an eyeglasses prescription long overdue. He would telephone Doctor Henry Bauer himself, to reschedule the latest in a string of appointments he had either cancelled or ignored.
Leaving the Bitson home that evening, Ed Dojcs
ak was feeling no better for either his own prospects or those of his ongoing investigation.
CHURCH FALLS, SOMETIME IN THE SEVENTIES
“HOW COULD YOU do it, Ed?” asked Leland McMaster, eyes wide as if someone had pinned back the lids with tacks. His expression was uncomprehending, as if he were struggling with an inevitability he didn’t quite understand. Leland’s normally meticulous blonde hair was greasy, stuck to his forehead in places as if it needed a wash. Though it was faint, Dojcsak detected the shadow of whisker on Leland’s chin. He ran an exploratory finger over his own smooth jaw. “Why would you do it?”
They were standing at the head of Church Falls Bluffs, in the same spot where County Coroner Keith Chislett suspected Shelly Hayden had taken her fatal plunge. Earlier, Leland had telephoned Dojcsak in a panic, insisting they meet. Privately, Dojcsak was hoping his friend had already been shipped overseas.
“Why blame me?” Dojcsak asked. He lit a cigarette, tossed the match seventy-five feet down into the swirling water of the gorge. Had Shelly Hayden descended so gracefully? Dojcsak didn’t think so, imagining the slap as her body hit the water. “You were the one screwing her.”
Leland buried his face in his hands, shaking his head as if to clear it of some obstruction. “Christ, Ed,” he said, “just because I fucked her doesn’t mean I killed her. How many times do I have to say it?”
“She was only fourteen,” Dojcsak said.
Leland blushed, as if he’d been caught masturbating by his mother. “Make yourself useful, Ed; give me a cigarette.”
“Same old Lee,” Dojcsak said as he passed him the package.
Leland accepted and said, “I thought we had a deal, Ed. So tell me, really, why are you doing this?”
Why indeed? Even to Dojcsak it was a fair question. Even to him the apparent answer was obvious: envy. Dojcsak was envious of Leland’s good looks, the force of his personality, his instinctively imperious manner and Lee’s easy ability to attract new friends, of either gender. For Dojcsak, struggling at the time to recognize and define his own better qualities, Lee McMaster was a measure against which Ed would somehow, always, be lacking.
But if the apparent answer was obvious, Dojcsak was self-consciously aware that the relationship between the two revealed a more complicated dynamic. Though Ed sometimes begrudged Leland his good looks and the injustice that concentrates in some people all the best ones, why then did he consider his friend awkwardly appealing? While he resented Leland’s affectations, in his absence why did Dojcsak borrow heavily from them, or aspire to his imperious manner? Dojcsak disapproved of, yet at the same time coveted McMaster’s friends, Leland the proxy by which Dojcsak had any friends at all. (You don’t want to be like him, Lucy the therapist would say if speaking with Charlie Brown, you want to be him.)
They smoked. Dojcsak said, “You have a sister, Lee. How old is Maggie these days? Twelve, thirteen?”
“Maggie is nine, Ed.”
Dojcsak considered this. “She looks older.”
“Yeah,” Leland replied “Cause she has tits. Small, but tits.”
“How would you like it if someone was feeling up Maggie?”
Now it was Leland’s turn to consider his response. What could he say? My father beat me to it? At times, in bed, listening to Maggie’s muted squeals, Leland wondered if his own predisposition was inherited from his dad. It concerned him only in so much as he might eventually have a daughter of his own.
Dojcsak said, “You’ll get off easy. Go overseas; probably come back a fucking hero”.
“Sure, Ed, the Marines are always looking for a few good men. My father says I’ll go in a boy, come out a man.” Leland raised his cigarette to his lips with a shaky hand. “If I come out at all.”
“What’s the matter, Lee, scared?” Dojcsak asked.
Scared? Scared, Leland thought, was watching a Hammer Horror Film in the dark, late at night after the family had gone to bed. Scared was telling ghost stories around an open campfire, wrapped in a sleeping bag in the woods on an island half way to the middle of Lake George, on a night where the wind was up, the leaves rustled like whispers in the trees and the lake lapped at the rocky shoreline like the tongue of a bloodthirsty serpent. Scared was racing down the ski slopes at Ellicottville and just as you believed you wouldn’t, losing an edge and then control, free-falling in cartwheels to the bottom of the hill. Scared was a quickening pulse, a racing heart. Scared was pure exhilaration. Leland wasn’t scared; he was terrified. His guts boiled with it, and his perspiration stank. Fear seeped from his asshole and his pores like fetid swamp water.
In the eastern sky, the sun was high on its journey west across the horizon. Dojcsak was standing facing the river, his back to Leland, who sat resting against a tree, on his haunches, elbows on his knees. Unable to read Dojcsak’s expression, Leland studied his posture for a hint of malice. There was none, but that didn’t stop Leland from wanting to plunge Dojcsak head long into the river, to the same fate that had befallen the girl. Leland was a soldier now and in this new world what was one more dead body?
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
IT WAS OFFICIAL: Ed Dojcsak now numbered among the seventy-five million Americans considered clinically obese. Though he tipped the scale at two hundred seventy pounds, it was not so much Dojcsak’s weight, Henry Bauer lectured, as his Body Mass Index that defined him as being a fat man, rather than merely a large one.
“With a BMI at plus thirty-seven, you’re at risk for a number of potential complications, Ed,” the doctor said on the day Dojcsak had relented to honor the visit he had twice in the past month forgotten.
“Such as?” Dojcsak asked, as if his body wasn’t already telling him so.
“Heart disease, emphysema, diabetes and stroke. Shall I go on?”
“Isn’t that enough?” said Dojcsak.
“Not hardly,” replied Bauer testily. “There’s also kidney failure and nerve damage owing to the resulting poor circulation. Possibly amputation, not to mention the risk of various forms of cancer—colon, stomach and lung—because of the cigarettes and diet.”
“I’m beginning to regret having re-scheduled this appointment.”
Ignoring Dojcsak, Bauer said, “You carry your weight in your belly, Ed, another bad sign.” He tapped Dojcsak’s solar plexus with the index finger of his gloved, right hand. “Visceral fat; deadly,” he warned with a shake of his head, though Henry himself was a few pounds beyond what Dojcsak considered to be the slim side of average. “It’s packed around your guts like sludge. It’s linked to the stress hormone cortisol and together with the smoking and the natural tendency of high insulin levels to thicken artery walls and elevate blood pressure, it makes you a prime candidate for the heart attack and stroke. Not necessarily in that order. Any shortness of breath, while either exerting yourself or at rest?”
Dojcsak’s expression ruled out exertion. To the latter he admitted, “Indigestion in the evening, after I go to sleep. But I eat late, and as you already know, poorly.”
“Feeling stressed?”
“It’s been busy,” Dojcsak stated dryly. “A murder investigation.”
Bauer turned up his nose, pressed his stethoscope to Dojcsak’s chest and said, “Breathe.” Dojcsak did. “Congested, like the Long Island Expressway.”
Dojcsak fixed the Doctor with a sour look.
“Again,” Bauer instructed.
Again, Dojcsak obliged. The instrument was cold on Dojcsak’s chest. He begrudged the indignity, the need to sit half naked before this man as if he were a specimen, a thought reminding Dojcsak he needed to pee. Earlier, he had been compelled to provide samples of blood and urine, then been asked to spread his cheeks for the obligatory internal, digital exam.
“Are you having sex?” Bauer asked after conducting the probe. Without waiting for a reply, he continued, “Your prostate is the size of a coconut, Ed.” He paused to remove his latex gloves and replace them with a fresh pair. “An exaggeration, maybe, but swollen beyond normal.”
Dojcsak sat quietly, as if understanding, finally, that the condition was not a sign of virility.
“Depressed?” Bauer wanted to know. Dojcsak harrumphed. His massive upper body quaked with the effort, but he did not immediately reply. “Sleeping more than usual? It’s a classic symptom.”
Dojcsak considered his response. The truth? Admit to Henry that of the ailments by which he currently was plagued—acid reflux, excess gas, boiling urine which scorched his urethra like molten lava, shortness of breath, absence of mind, short sightedness, pain in the feet, pain in the back, pain in the chest and generally an overwhelming sense of lackluster malaise, if such a condition were to exist—of all these, insomnia was not among them? Prevaricate, knowing Bauer would recognize the lie and the imminent collapse of Dojcsak’s anatomy, as if he were one of the twin towers at the World Trade Center disintegrating into an indistinguishable heap of rubble and human debris?
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