Stone Cold Dead (40 page)

Peruso finally relented. He only allowed me to see her head, as her neck and thorax had been dissected during the autopsy. He promised me that I did not want to see that. In fact he promised me I didn’t want to see any of it.

I had expected a gruesome sight. I had expected to vomit and run from the room. But what I saw affected me in quite a different way. I was serene in my horror, gazing unflinchingly at the cyanotic blotches that swirled over her bloated face, parts of which had been gashed and gouged by underwater collisions and the violent currents of her watery grave. The nose was partly missing, and a piece of the cheek as well. Fred Peruso theorized that ice chunks or the dam gate had scraped the tissue away. He explained that the body floats through or on top of water face down, with the head slightly lower than the trunk of the body. In fast moving water, the bloated skin puckers, swells, and wrinkles. He called it “maceration” of the skin.

I stared at the face before me. Her hair clung together in bunches, like seaweed tangled and twisted on itself. The last thing I focused on was her lips. Swollen and hardened permanently in a grotesque death grimace, her open mouth revealed the white teeth and silver-gray braces. Peruso gently pulled the sheet back over her face, and I left the room.

“You held up better than I thought you would,” said Fred who rejoined me in the corridor outside. “Why was it so important for you to see the body?”

I drew a deep breath. Then another. “I want to remember what she looked like when I nail the monster who did this to her.”

I reached the Metzger farm at half past noon. An old Chevy sedan and a weathered pickup sat parked next to Dick Metzger’s green truck and the porch. I knocked on the storm door, and a plump woman in her fifties answered. I told her I had come to offer my condolences to the family. She opened the door, and I stepped inside.

“I’m Winnie Terwilliger,” she said in a low voice in my ear. “I live over in Palatine Bridge, but I’ve known Irene for many years. That’s Mr. Sloan and his wife over there. I’m afraid I don’t recall their first names. They brought a couple of casseroles and some punch.”

I found Irene Metzger in the armchair across the room, staring down at the floor. Mrs. Sloan was holding her hand, patting it from time to time and whispering comfort in her ear. Dick Metzger was nowhere in sight.

I knelt down before Irene, took her hand from Mrs. Sloan, and looked up into her bleary eyes. I told her how sorry I was. She stared back at me in misery, her cheeks fallen, hollow, and ashen. Her lips quivered and tears overflowed her eyelids. She began to sob, her entire body convulsing with each breath she drew and expelled. I squeezed her hand gently and, bowing my head in grief, wept with her. Mrs. Sloan continued her whispering, soothing Irene with her warm, rhythmic voice. Then I felt a hand on my head. I lifted my eyes to see Irene gazing down upon me, patting my head so lovingly, so maternally, that I pressed her other hand to my cheek and held it fast. I muttered over and again how sorry I was, and we remained that way: I, at her knee, she, stroking my hair, for several minutes. Finally, Mrs. Sloan offered me something to eat, but I declined, rising from the floor and wiping my sloppy face with the back of my hand. I touched Irene on the shoulder, my weepy eyes holding hers for one more moment.

I left the house in a rush and ran into Dick Metzger as he came up the porch steps. He caught me briefly in his arms, and I nearly fell, his rough hands groping my waist and my breast. I was sure it was an accident, a mistake caused by our collision and my subsequent loss of balance. But then, for just a split second, as I found my legs beneath me and no longer feared a fall, I felt his right hand slide down my back and take a firm grip of my behind. My body was pressed against him, my face inches from his. I saw his dead, lizard eyes staring at me. No expression, no embarrassment, no apology for his straying hands. I wriggled free and ran. He called after me, but I was gone. Moments later, I roared away in my car, barely able to see through the windshield.

The Figlio house was a brick duplex on the west end of town, a few blocks from the railroad tracks and St. Joseph’s Hospital. I had been neglecting my planned interview with Joey’s parents. I particularly wanted to talk to his mother. The weather was dry and cold as I climbed out of my car and onto the stoop. Orlando Figlio answered my knocking in a flannel shirt and gray trousers.

“Miss Stone,” he said through the storm door. “What are you doing here?”

“You told me I could talk to your wife. Remember?”

“Today’s not a good day. She’s very upset about last night. Wouldn’t even go to church this morning. And now I have to apologize to you again for that no-good, little crook bothering you.”

“It’s all right, Mr. Figlio,” I said. “Actually, Joey kind of saved my life last night. I think we’re over the worst, he and I,” and I smiled.

“Saved your life? The cops said he busted in and held you hostage or something.”

“We had supper,” I said. “That was all.”

“Chief Finn says he killed that girl. Darleen. He says he’s asking the DA to file murder charges against him.”

I was shivering on the porch. “May I come in, Mr. Figlio? Can we talk inside?”

He nodded and stood aside to let me in. The place was dark and smelled of tomato sauce, meat, onions, and garlic, all fused together and absorbed by the fabrics and rugs. There was a human smell as well, trapped in clothing and drapes, like when a place smells of dog. Not that the Figlio home smelled bad or dirty or in any way like a dog, but the clinging odor betrayed the presence of people living inside.

“You’re welcome to stay a few minutes, Miss Stone,” he said, motioning to the roll-arm sofa, upholstered in a faded, worn tapestry. “I could offer you a coffee if you like.”

I declined.

“I just don’t know what to do about that boy,” he said. “The day he was born, his mother’s only prayer was for him to stay out of prison. Then, when he started getting into trouble with the law, she prayed to all the saints that he not end up in the electric chair. Now look. Murder.”

“I don’t believe Joey murdered Darleen,” I said.

“Maybe not. But he sure tried to murder that Mr. Russell. Twice.”

He had me there.

“I don’t know where we went wrong with him,” he continued. “Maybe he was just born bad.”

“Perhaps if I could speak to his mother,” I said.

Orlando Figlio frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know. Like I said, this is a bad day.”

“It’s okay, Lando,” came a voice from the hallway. I looked to see a thin, gray woman of about fifty, dressed in a housecoat, her hair disheveled and eyes pink. A smoldering cigarette dangled from her right hand.

“My name is Eleonora Stone,” I said, rising to extend a hand to her. She waved me off and took a seat in the armchair next to the sofa.

“You’re the girl the police say Joey tried to kill last night, aren’t you?” she said.

“Oh, no, Mrs. Figlio. I was just telling your husband that Joey actually saved me from an attack last night.”

“Then why do the police say he killed Darleen and tried to kill you?”

“They’re looking for a simple conclusion,” I said.

“A scapegoat, you mean. Lando,” she called, leaning back and craning her neck to make eye contact with her husband, “it’s Sacco and Vanzetti all over again.”

“He did try to kill that teacher,” her husband pointed out gently.

“He’s a good boy,” insisted Mrs. Figlio. Then turning back to me, she asked what would happen to Joey.

“Since he’s a minor, he won’t go to prison for the attack on Mr. Russell,” I said. “As for Darleen Hicks, I don’t believe he murdered her.”

“I know he didn’t harm her,” said the mother with sudden vigor.

This seemed a good opening to make the case for the true motive of my visit. I told her that I wanted to help Joey and was sure I could if she would help me.

“What can a young girl like you do?” she asked. “Cook him a nice meal. That, he would like.”

I drew a breath of resolve and resisted the temptation to answer in kind. “I’d like to have a look at Joey’s things,” I said. “In his room.”

“What? What do you think you’ll find?”

“They’ve searched his possessions at Fulton, twice, and I’ve personally gone through Darleen’s room very carefully. No one has found anything to prove that Darleen returned Joey’s affections and was actually planning to elope with him. Without that, the police will try to show that Joey was pursuing her against her wishes. That will make the case against him stronger.”

“He never said anything about running away,” said Mrs. Figlio. “In fact, he hardly mentioned her to me. A couple of times many months ago.”

“Did he ask you for money recently? In the past two months?”

Her mien darkened. “As a matter of fact, he did. In November. Before he got sent up to Fulton. I cashed in two savings bonds and gave him forty-two dollars. Lost some value by cashing them in early.”

“May I have a look at his room?”

Orlando Figlio said he didn’t care either way. The boy was no good, and my rummaging through his things wouldn’t do anything to change that. Mrs. Figlio shrugged and pushed herself out of her seat.

“Okay,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette in the standing ashtray next to the chair. She didn’t quite smother it, and the butt continued to hiss smoke into the air. “If you think it might help my Joey.”

Mrs. Figlio led me down the dark hallway, walls papered with an old damask design, past reproductions of lithographic vistas of Naples and the Amalfi Coast and photographs of ancestors posing stiffly in their wedding finery. Of the three doors that squared off the end of the corridor—two bedrooms and one bathroom—Joey’s was on the left. Mrs. Figlio pushed open the door and motioned for me to go on in.

The bedroom was dim, close, and stale-smelling, like a cave, as if it had been moist and dark for too long. A small bed, its lumpy mattress covered by an old, blue, wool blanket and a single flat pillow, occupied the wall on the left, and a wooden dresser slouched nearby. On the next wall was the room’s only window, its roll-down shade shutting out almost all light from the outside. Across from the bed, a large banded trunk sat against the wall. That’s where I would start.

I found comic books, old clothes, newspapers saved for no reason that I could discern, and some scratched forty-fives and older seventy-eights. There was an empty pack of firecrackers, a collection of motor-oil decals, and matchbooks, empty, half used. Near the bottom, I dug out a box of old photographs, but those must have belonged to his parents or grandparents, as the newest picture of the bunch was at least thirty years old. Finally, stuffed into a corner, I uncovered a crumpled stack of papers that represented the sum of Joey Figlio’s literary output.

His poems, like the ones I’d found in Darleen’s room, appeared to have been spelled by a troll. The difference was that these were the filthiest verses I’d ever read. But aside from the spelling, punctuation, and dirty words, they weren’t badly written. Joey was a raw, undisciplined poet, to be sure, but he had a way with words. Foul, suggestive, forbidden words, especially so when you consider that a fifteen-year-old girl was the subject. And how could he write about Darleen’s most private places with such convincing detail if she was a virgin as Fred Peruso had assured me. I supposed the two might have engaged in some heavy petting, but this was clinical and suggested formidable experience and familiarity. A perverted collection of bad intentions and mad love for a dead girl. And yet, somehow, I was seized by the fantasy of some beau writing such shameless obscenities for me, about me.

Mrs. Figlio asked me what I was reading, and I blushed crimson. I had forgotten she was there, looking over my shoulder.

“Just some old school work,” I said, shoving the papers back inside the trunk.

Joey’s dresser was crammed with clothes: shirts, trousers, and socks, most probably too old and small for him to wear. Nothing at all to illuminate Darleen’s feelings for the crazy boy.

Then I moved the bed, searched behind and beneath it, finding nothing but a worn, empty valise. I tapped the floorboards for hollow spots, surely giving Mrs. Figlio cause to be suspicious of my sanity. Still nothing. With nothing to show that Darleen had any true feelings for Joey, I feared that, despite his having saved my life the night before, he might well have been delusional. He might well have murdered Darleen Hicks and convinced himself he hadn’t. Or perhaps he knew all too well that he had killed her and didn’t care. I’d run out of places to search.