“Stay,” Burke said. “There.” He pointed to the narrow hall leading to the back room. “Go.” He motioned to Eugene. “You too.”
“What’s this all about?” Eugene asked. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?” Burke said as he herded Seamus and Eugene into the inner office. It smelled of old receipts, stale tobacco and a few other things Burke preferred not to consider. “Sit.” he ordered. With only two chairs and a desk crowding the small space, Burke elected to stand. He lighted a cigarette and said, “Seamus, open the envelope, Eugene, empty your pockets.”
Neither man moved in response to the command. Burke had anticipated the possibility either man or both might refuse his request and suggest he return with a warrant. Given the circumstances, it’s what Burke would have done.
“You have only two options,” he said. “Do as I ask, or walk with me up the street to the station. I’ll charge you both in the death of Missy.” He reconsidered and added, “I may do anyway.”
Seamus shifted uncomfortably, his brow beginning to drip sweat. Eugene lighted a cigarette. With both he and Burke puffing madly, the atmosphere in the small room became toxic, as if there were insufficient oxygen to accommodate the needs of three large men. Christopher sensed the damp under his arms and the moisture crawling across his shoulders and down his back, staining his shirt. The adrenalin ran through his body, making him woozy, turning his legs to jelly and causing his hands to tremble. He hoped he appeared more convincing than he felt, and hoped to God he would not have to draw his weapon.
“I’m on a really, really, really short fuse here, guys,” Burke said as if he meant it. “Open the envelope, Seamus. Eugene, empty your pockets. Don’t make me ask you again.”
Both men acceded, almost resignedly, to Burke’s second request. As instructed, the photographs and cash were laid out on the surface of Eugene’s desk.
“That’s a lot of money,” Burke said with a whistle, fingering the inch thick stack of twenty-dollar bills.
“I have a family to protect,” said Eugene, as if this explained it.
“A cozy little racket you have going, Seamus,” Christopher said, turning to Mcteer. “Corrupt the kids, blackmail the parents.”
Burke studied the photos, arranged in no particular order across the desk; most he had seen before, but in a new series, Missy was pictured fornicating with an older man—not just an older man, but old. Burke recognized her companion. Though his instinct resisted the notion, on closer inspection his vision confirmed it: Leland McMaster Senior. The photo was grainy; unlike the others, it appeared to have been taken surreptitiously, probably without the old man’s knowledge. A full notch up on the scale of perversion beyond the others he had seen, Burke thought.
“Fuck me,” he said. “How long has this been going on?”
“The blackmail or the pictures?” Bitson replied.
“This,” Burke said, indicating with his finger the photo of Missy and her grandfather. “What’s the matter with you, Eugene? Didn’t you or your wife know about this? Suspect it was happening?”
“Not until he showed me these,” said Eugene, glaring at Mcteer, eyeing the photographs reluctantly. Bitson appeared about to weep. “She was thirteen, what were we supposed to believe? That she was capable of this for God sake?” He said it as if it were Missy’s fault.
Eugene pushed at the photos, scattering some from the table to the floor. Neither Mcteer nor Burke moved to retrieve them.
“This one,” he continued, indicating Seamus, “came to me last night, a week after my little girl was buried. Said her death wasn’t the last—or the worst—of my grief. Said he’d print the pictures—edited for general consumption, he said—on the front page of the newspaper, or post them to the Internet uncut! What will they think of your little princess now? he said. ‘They’ll be thinking she asked for it, got no better than she deserved, screwing an eighty-year old man. They think it anyway,” said Eugene despondently. “Because of Maggie’s reputation. What was I supposed to do?”
“I expect it’s how you kept The Tribune operational all these years, right, Seamus?” said Burke. “A shitty little paper like that; should have known you had something going on the side.”
“I’ll not say a word without my attorney,” said Mcteer.
“Was Jordy your pimp? Did you pay him to recruit local talent, like Missy? Or was it Radigan, or McMaster? We know enough right now to hang the lot of you, Seamus. Obstruction of justice; child pornography; contributing to the delinquency of a minor; murder.”
“No, not that,” said Seamus. Then, “I’ll not say a word without my attorney.”
Burke turned to Eugene. “Has Maggie seen these?”
“No,” said Eugene. “No.” He indicated the money lying untouched on the table. “This was so she never would. It would kill her to know that he was doing to Missy, what he did to her.”
“It’s too late for any of that now, Eugene,” said Burke.
Eugene Bitson brought his hands to his face and shuddered, a silent sob. He wiped the moisture from his eyes with fingers that resembled the roots of a small tree. Where once it may have made him appear boyish, the tangle of dark curls hanging at his forehead made him appear shaggy, like a dog. With the process of turning himself inside out like a reversible skin complete, Eugene Bitson seemed like a man uncomfortable with the change, as if having finally acquired a new suit he was satisfied with the color, though uncertain of the cut.
“It’s too late for that now,” agreed Eugene. “It’ll kill her to find out. Her own father, for God sake.” Eugene moved slowly from his chair. “I should go, Maggie is home alone.”
Burke pressed his hand to Eugene’s shoulder, settling Bitson effortlessly back into his seat.
“Sorry, Eugene, you’re coming with me,” said Burke. “You’re both coming with me. When Dojcsak returns we’ll chat. The three of us, together with Ed. There’s still a lot we don’t know—that I don’t know.”
“But Maggie,” pleaded Eugene. “She’s home alone.”
“Maggie will keep,” said Burke.
“I’ll not say a word without my attorney,” repeated Seamus. “Not one word.”
“That’s already three, shithead, and counting” said Burke, gathering the photos and cash into a large envelope supplied by Eugene. “But you know what they say.”
Neither Eugene nor Seamus did.
“A picture is worth a thousand words.”
They departed the Exxxotica together, Eugene turning the key in the lock behind him, aware, that for him, it would be for the final time.
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
AN HOUR LATER, Dojcsak stood with Pridmore and Christopher Burke in his office, the men smoking, Sara drinking decaffeinated coffee from a mug, Eugene and Seamus locked together in a broom-closet cum holding-cell down the hall. After the previous evening, Sara’s stomach had finally settled; the coffee was her first of the day.
“When do we pick them up?” asked Burke.
“Morning should be soon enough,” replied Dojcsak. “No rush; I don’t suppose either Leland or Radigan is going anywhere so long as we keep these two fools under lock and key. Let’s process the paperwork first. Besides, I need to notify the State Police. I don’t trust us to bring in those two alone.”
“Any news on Jordy?” Burke said.
“Nothing,” Dojcsak replied.
Sara said, “Is he a suspect or merely wanted in the questioning of…?”
Burke said, “Well, he’s a suspect in something, isn’t he? Stat rape, contributing to the delinquency of, dealing drugs.”
Dojcsak shrugged. “An embarrassment of riches.”
Sara was uneasy with Dojcsak’s decision to delay picking up both Radigan and McMaster. They’d already lost track of Jordy Bitson, hadn’t they? But if they were to detain every reasonable suspect—as Dojcsak had first described it—they’d require the services of the National Guard.
Leaving
Dojcsak to make calls, Sara and Burke returned to their respective cubbies to prepare reports. Sara was careful to include each detail, supposition and conjecture. All but the call from Missy’s mobile to the Dojcsak home on the day Missy died. Until Sara reconnected with Jen, she’d leave that out.
Sara completed her report on the computer, printing it only after she had reviewed it three times. At five o’clock, Sara submitted the final edit to Dojcsak, poured a second cup of coffee, thought about telephoning Cassie McMaster from the office, then decided against it. Sara would get to bed early tonight, in anticipation of a busy day tomorrow.
There was some satisfaction knowing Leland McMaster Senior would now be punished for the rape, if not the murder, of his granddaughter. It couldn’t compensate, however, for her despair over knowing it had been allowed to occur in the first place.
Christopher Burke popped his head into the cubicle and asked, “Buy you dinner?”
“What’s in it for you?” Sara said, regretting immediately the tone of her reply.
“Can I take that as a no?”
“I’m tired, Chris, beat. If we’re going to have an early morning, I need to get an early night.”
“Suit yourself,” he said, walking away.
“Maybe next time?” she called, but Burke had already gone.
Sara left ten minutes later, heading for the rectory instead of home. However inappropriate, Sara herself was unable to resist the inevitable pull of desire.
…
Maggie drove deliberately, her hands placed precisely on the steering wheel at ten o’clock and two, applying sufficient pressure on the gas pedal to maintain acceleration but to not exceed the posted speed limit. Surprisingly, the palms of her hands were dry; Maggie had expected they would be damp, greasy with nervous tension. But Maggie was not nervous. She was something (perhaps resolute?), realizing now, like Cassie, that in order to claim her future, inevitably she must re-claim her past. For Maggie, the realization had come much later in life, at the cost of her youngest child. Without a college education, Maggie was unable to define it this way either to herself or to anyone else who was to later ask.
Maggie supposed her feelings had to do with the killing of Missy, the absolute circumstances of her passing, yes, but more to do with how her daughter had died, the relative circumstances surrounding her death. Had Missy been killed in a traffic accident, or drowned, Maggie would be devastated, of course, but could take comfort in knowing her death was arbitrary, a random act of tragedy that could happen to anyone. As it was, Maggie would be tormented by the realization this death could happen only to a daughter of hers.
Maggie arrived to her parent’s home after dark, exhausted from over thirty years of humiliation, recrimination and despair.
Her father answered the door at the first knock; he had anticipated Maggie’s approach, though she had not telephoned in advance to warn of her arrival.
After almost a quarter century, Maggie crossed the threshold into her childhood home. She hadn’t thought what to expect, but now experienced a sense of familiarity, as if wrapped with an old blanket; a not particularly comfortable blanket but one musty and smelling of damp, as if left in the cellar too long. Her father carried a drink in his hand. A moist, unlit cigar hung from his lips. The home was as Maggie remembered it, only aged.
“You’re here because of her,” Leland McMaster said, extending neither a formal nor informal salutation, his eyes refusing to meet those of his daughter. To Maggie, it was a small triumph, but one she savored.
“Because of who, daddy?” she replied. The voice was of another generation.
“Your girl,” he said. He closed the door behind her.
As he passed near, Maggie recalled the sound of ice cubes against glass, the stale smell of tobacco and alcohol on clothes, body and breath, the feel of damp, coarse hair against her smooth skin, and the salty tang of sweat on her tongue, the desperate encouragement from him, followed by anxious reassurances and always the thoughtless and shameful promise that it would never happen again.
Maggie was breathing heavily, struggling to draw oxygen into her lungs, her momentary triumph forgotten.
Her father said, “Your mother is in the living room.” He turned, leaving Maggie standing alone in the front hall.
Helen McMaster sat in her wheelchair in the living room, before a hearth in which there was no flame. She too had a drink clutched in her bony fingers. A spider’s web of blue veins crawled over the back of her hand, traveling up her arm to disappear in the cuff of a shabby, chenille throw, hair carelessly piled on her head so it appeared lopsided. Under other circumstances and on another woman it would be pitiable. Maggie felt only contempt. She crossed the room to her mother, kissing her on the cheek.
“You smell,” Helen McMaster said of her daughter. “When was the last time you had a bath? And your mouth; is that contagious?”
Maggie had become inured to her appearance and her odor. Without responding to her mother, she sat.
“Why have you come?” her mother asked.
“Dojcsak sent her,” Leland said before Maggie could reply.
“The man who killed our son,” Helen murmured, staring into her drink as if somehow hoping to glimpse an image of Leland Junior floating in the bottom.
“The man who crucified our son,” Leland corrected. Her father stood in the center of the floor. He swayed on legs made uncertain by alcohol. “He persecuted your brother, made me send him off to Vietnam. Now he wants to persecute me.” He pointed a trembling finger to Maggie. “This one has come to finish what Dojcsak started, to blame me for the child’s death.” McMaster turned to his wife. “To blame us for her death.” He drained his glass in one swallow and moved to the sideboard to pour another. He did not offer for either his daughter or his wife.
“Why should she do that? What have we to do with it?” Helen asked as if speaking only to her husband.
Leland shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “After all this time, you’d think she’d be over it.”
“Over what?” Helen asked. “What has she to be over?”
Maggie found her voice. “Don’t, ma’” she said.
“Don’t what?” Helen replied, glaring at Maggie. “I said I was sorry didn’t I? I’m sorry that she’s dead, not because I had anything to do with it. Is that what you believe?”
“She wouldn’t be here otherwise,” said Leland.
“You’re so self-centered, as if you’re the only mother who has ever lost a child,” said Helen.
“I was a child, ma’,” Maggie said, as if pleading.
“You were never a child,” said Leland, settling himself carefully in a wingback chair, shaking his head to and fro as if to exclaim the thought.
“You’re right, daddy,” said Maggie knowingly. “I never was.”
“Never,” he repeated. Maggie stiffened as if to speak, but remained silent. “Couldn’t keep your knees shut,” Leland continued, as if by refusing to challenge him, Maggie had exonerated him. “Couldn’t keep your bathrobe closed.”
“I won’t listen to this,” said Helen.
“Shut up, Helen,” Leland said, turning to his wife. “You’ll listen.”
“I won’t,” Helen squawked. “Not in my home. I won’t listen to this filth.” Her voice trembled. “Not in my home.” Helen raised a hand to her ear, as if to shut out the sound.
Rising to refill his drink, Leland said, “Shut your flap-trap woman. You will listen. You weren’t born in a bloody convent and neither,” he said turning on Maggie, “were you.” He poured from a half-drained bottle of Jack Daniels, not bothering to add ice. “A man has his appetites. A man makes mistakes. You,” he said, pointing an accusatory finger at Maggie, “were a big, bloody mistake. From the time you were born, I looked at you and said to myself, Uh-oh, here comes trouble.”
Helen’s drink dropped to the floor, the glass shattering on the tile hearth. Leland sat, as if he hadn’t noticed. Helen’s other hand went to her ear. For
a moment, Maggie thought of the three monkeys, though for all the comfort she offered her daughter, Helen might just as well have been blind and mute too.
“What in the name of God was I thinking?” McMaster said, as if expecting an answer. “Don’t think you’re without blame,” he said now, turning on Helen. “You drove me to it.” Then to Maggie, “What was I supposed to do? Have an affair? Ruin my reputation?” He sat for a moment, concentrating on his drink. “I should have fucked your sister,” Leland said to no one.
The room was silent, the wind against the shutters the only sound. At that moment, it was as if a bomb had been dropped, or a dam burst, or a great cloud of toxic ash had descended upon them so rapidly they hadn’t time either to speak or to react, the three of them suspended in a single moment where one life ends, another begins—like victims of the eruption at Pompeii. Had she been able, Maggie would have imagined this to be the way Missy felt when she died, the moment her father snapped her daughter’s neck.
The Blood On Our Hands Page 43