Stone Cold Dead (26 page)

“You wanted to see it. This is it,” said Gus Arnold.

I popped open my door and stepped out. The snow hills rose before me. I calculated in my head without success just how far we were from the spot where Darleen’s lunch box had been found on the other side of the snow.

“So you parked here and took a nap?” I asked.

“No,” he said, climbing out of the car after me. “Over there, behind that row of trees.”

I looked to where he was pointing, about forty yards away, and couldn’t see it. It just looked like woods.

“Go take a look,” he said. “There’s a narrow opening between those trees and the rest of the forest. I park there because no one can see me. It’s quiet.”

I investigated his claim, and discovered he was indeed telling the truth. The small gap between the line of trees and the woods was just large enough to back a bus into, and it would be quite invisible to anyone at the other end of the clearing.

I returned to my car and approached the snow hills, gazing at the melting mountains, looking for evidence of something out of the ordinary. Through the tall pines, I could hear the roar and rumble of trucks in the distance. They were clearing snow on the other side.

“It must have been dark that day,” I said to Gus Arnold. “Did you leave the bus?”

“I just put my feet up and took a snooze. A half hour later, I drove back to the depot.”

“You didn’t open the door?” I asked.

“What are you driving at?”

I strode over to the edge of the woods and picked up an empty pint bottle from the slush. It was Old Crow, the label slipping off from several days of soaking in the wet.

“I thought you said you parked over there,” I said, indicating the line of trees opposite.

“That’s not mine,” he stammered. “You can’t prove it’s mine.”

“I’m not the police,” I said. “I don’t care if you were drinking on the job, although the parents of your passengers might have something to say about that. But we’re about a hundred yards from where Darleen Hicks’s lunch box was found. Now, do you want to tell me the truth or would you rather I have a talk with your dispatcher about the flat tire?”

He thought about it, probably wondering if I might really rat him out. In the end, he chose to play it safe and admitted the bottle was his.

“If I were to dig around here, would I find more empties?”

He hung his head and grunted yes.

I gazed up at the snow hills again, gauging their height. The tallest peaks were easily fifteen or twenty feet high. Could a sixty-year-old drunk scale the hills carrying a girl over his shoulder? I doubted it, but Gus Arnold was a large man. And what about the lunch box? It seemed possible that he could have lost track of it while scrambling over slippery snow.

“Did you climb through the hills that day?” I asked, just to cover my bases.

“Are you crazy? Of course not. I don’t have any reason to climb over the hills.”

He sounded sincere, but how could I be sure?

I looked back to where I’d found the empty bottle, and I realized I hadn’t considered the woods properly. They bordered the hills, with the snow piled right up against the trees. I made my way over to the nearest thicket and waded in a few feet. One could easily weave through the woods and reach the other side, I figured. Sure, the path was tight with sharp, brittle branches to navigate, but it seemed possible. Certainly easier than carrying a body over the snow hills.

“And you didn’t go through the woods either?”

“No. I sat in the bus drinking till the bottle was gone. I was here twenty or thirty minutes. Why do you got to ask me such things?”

“It’s not an accusation,” I said.

“I didn’t kill that little girl,” he said. “I swear I didn’t.”

“And you didn’t see anyone else here that day? Another car, perhaps?”

He shook his head firmly. “I didn’t see no one.”

“What can I do for you today, Miss Stone?” asked Arnold Dienst, leaning toward me at his large, oak desk. Some Stravinsky pulsed at a low but distinct volume from a hi-fi in a wooden cabinet behind him. I recognized the “Concerto in D for Strings”; my father was an admirer of Stravinsky’s, and I knew this piece well, having heard it countless times since it was first recorded in the late forties. The first movement sounded like the score to a suspense film.

“Do you like Stravinsky, Dr. Dienst?” I asked.

He mugged an expression of mild satisfaction. “I think the better question is how is it that you know Stravinsky?”

I blushed, now wishing I hadn’t mentioned it. Yes, I had been showing off a little. “Never mind. I meant to ask if you found this music conducive to your work here. It’s not always soothing.”

“I find modern music stimulating and inspirational. That creates a peaceful satisfaction in my mind, no matter how frenetic or dissonant the music. I conduct therapy sessions with the boys once a week, always with music playing. Everything from Webern to Schoenberg, Janacek, Hindemith, Ravel. And if I want to pander to the boys’ tastes, I play something they’ll like. Copland, for instance.”

“Really? They go for Copland?”

He pondered my question for a moment, possibly reconsidering his choice of words. Perhaps “like” was an exaggeration.

“Yes,” he granted reluctantly, “the boys would probably rather listen to their rock-around-the-clock music.”

Dr. Dienst noticed my grin despite my best efforts to swallow it. He smiled awkwardly, covering his large teeth with his stretched lips, but his eyes betrayed a vague awareness that he’d said something wrong.

“Do the boys like the modern music you play?” I asked, wanting to put him back at his ease. I was certain I knew the answer.

“They hate it, of course,” he said with a good-natured smile that parted his lips and showed the long teeth he’d been trying to hide moments before. “But the music provokes strong emotional responses in them without the accompanying physical violence. I believe that to be a salubrious exercise.”

“What about Joey Figlio? How does he react to Stravinsky?”

Dienst sat back in his chair and rocked, aiming his penetrating stare at me, trying to understand what made me tick. His wasn’t a lecherous gaze but a curious one.

“Joey Figlio sticks his fingers into his ears,” he said. “And when he’s feeling particularly industrious, he plugs his ears with wads of paper.”

He watched me a while longer, as the energetic first movement ended and gave way to the lighter second.

“Why are you here, Miss Stone?”

“I’m investigating the disappearance of Darleen Hicks,” I said.

“Yes, I get that. But you’re talking to me about Stravinsky and beating around the bush. I know you’re not in love with Joey Figlio, as he claimed in court. So what exactly do you want, Miss Stone?”

Dienst was a smart man. He’d seen through my circling and stalling, the conversational chairs I’d upended as diversions to trip and delay him while I worked my way around to asking the real questions. A cheap tactic on my part, to be sure, and not particularly clever. Sometimes outright flirting worked better. But with a man like Arnold Dienst, my charms—such as they were—and trickery proved equally ineffective.

“What I really want is to search Joey Figlio’s belongings,” I said finally. “I think he may have messages or notes from Darleen Hicks in his possession. They may provide clues as to what happened.”

“This may be a reformatory, Miss Stone,” he said with a gentle smile, “but we try to respect the privacy of our boys to the extent possible. Now, if you were to obtain a warrant from a court of law, we would, of course, comply. But I cannot let you root through Joey Figlio’s possessions.”

That’s the answer I’d expected and why, frankly, I had been beating around the bush. But I hoped Dienst still might provide some kernel of information for me.

“Joey Figlio had a handwritten note, addressed to Darleen from a man named Ted. He was hiding it somewhere here at Fulton, and he gave it to Frankie Ralston to give to me.”

Dienst swiveled toward the window and looked off into the distance as the third movement began, buzzing like wasps. He rocked in his chair.

“The last time you were here, Miss Stone, you asked me to search Joey Figlio’s belongings as well.” I said nothing. It wasn’t a question. “When he left the facility without permission and stole your car, I felt it was justified under the circumstances.”

“You felt what was justified?” I asked.

He swung his chair around, folded his hands on the desk before him, and looked me in the eye. “I searched his room and locker,” he said. “While he was missing and then again when I brought him back here after the hearing. I needed to be sure he wasn’t bringing contraband into the school.”

“Contraband?” I asked.

“Cigarettes, alcohol, chewing gum, soda pop, weapons. I believe that in order to cure the juvenile delinquent, we must nourish the body and mind. A boy must be provided a nutritious diet, or he will make no progress toward rehabilitation and, in fact, will recidivate. That means no candy or smoking or fizzy soft drinks here. We only allow drinks such as wheatgrass, carrot, and orange juice. Milk, of course, though I’m trying to replace it with yogurt. And distilled water. No chlorination permitted in our diet here. And I believe margarine is superior to butter in every way.”

“Not taste,” I said.

“No, not taste,” he granted with a disapproving look. “I met the violinist Yehudi Menuhin in Switzerland three years ago, and he impressed upon me the benefits of the vegetarian lifestyle and yoga. No meat has passed my lips since that month in Gstaad. Of course, the board of directors here insists that we provide meat to the boys, but I have faith that one day I’ll win them over, once the research proves the benefits of a meatless diet.”

“And the yoga?” I asked.

“I haven’t been able to find a yogi anywhere north of Greenwich Village, I’m afraid. But I’ll keep searching.”

“I’m sure the boys appreciate these efforts,” I said, scolding myself silently for cracking wise with such an earnest man.

“One would think,” he said. “But not really. I instituted the new regimen when I arrived two years ago. Meat only on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Fish on Friday—we have our share of Catholic boys,” he said in a dramatized whisper, which included cupping his large hand to one side of his equally large mouth. “But I feel that fish is a healthful option, religious edicts aside. And the rest of the week we serve vegetarian fare.”

“Did you find anything?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“When you searched Joey Figlio’s belongings, did you find anything interesting?”

“No poems, if that’s what you’re aiming at.”

“I’m casting a wide net,” I said. “I’m interested in anything that little JD might have squirreled away under his mattress.”

“There was nothing written at all,” said Dienst. “As I’ve said before, I’m not entirely convinced he knows how to read and write.”

I cocked my head. “But there was something.”

“I hate to disappoint you, Miss Stone,” he said just as the Stravinsky came to an end. The needle scratched round and round, bumping against the paper label. Dienst stood and switched off the hi-fi. “There was nothing out of the ordinary. Just his dirty clothes, a transistor radio—stolen, surely—twenty-three cents, and his thermos bottle.”

“He brought back a thermos, or was it already here?” I asked.

Dr. Dienst looked alarmed. Had he overlooked an important detail? “It was already among his things when he escaped and stole your car,” he mumbled. “Just a run-of-the-mill thermos bottle. Red-and-black plaid.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Dr. Dienst called Frank Olney to give him the news. I watched him silently as he clutched the receiver tightly in his hand, explaining how he had discovered the thermos among Joey’s possessions.

“Miss Stone says the girl’s mother mentioned a missing thermos from the lunch box you found in the snow,” said Dienst. “I thought it wise to inform you immediately in the unlikely event that Joey has the girl’s thermos and not his own.”

Frank said something on the other end of the line, and Dienst nodded. “Of course. I’ll confiscate it immediately and hold it here until you arrive.”

He replaced the receiver and gave me a sheepish shrug.

While Dienst’s went to recover the thermos, I waited outside his office and reviewed the new information in my head. By his own admission, Joey Figlio had been caught in the Metzger barn by Darleen’s stepfather well after dark on the evening she’d disappeared. He was—seemingly—in possession of her missing thermos. A thermos Irene Metzger had filled and placed in her daughter’s lunch box that very morning. Did that mean Joey Figlio was a killer? He’d threatened me twice with a knife and left me to die on a frozen stretch of desolate county highway. And he’d definitely tried to murder Ted Russell. He was a deeply disturbed boy, at least by my reckoning, and I had no doubts he could kill. But could he kill Darleen? Did he love her as much as he claimed? And would that even matter? Perhaps his love justified murder in his twisted mind. He had written on the back of his photograph that if he couldn’t have Darleen, no one else would. I recalled the envelope in Darleen’s locker. The one with the money, the phony driver’s license—a good enough forgery to get the underage girl married—and the letter from Wilbur Burch, outlining their plans for a secret and illegal elopement to Arizona. If Joey Figlio had learned of the plan, could he have carried out his threat and killed the girl he loved? I wasn’t sure, but the pallor of Dr. Arnold Dienst’s large, horselike face told me where his worst fears lay.