Stone Cold Dead (45 page)

I shook my head. “There’s no proof. Maybe you could search his place. His car for sure.”

“I’m going to talk to the cops down in Hudson. I want to know if this Brossard fellow was ever on their radar. What about you, Ellie?”

“I’m waiting for you to get a warrant.”

There was quite a stir when the afternoon edition came out. All four of my stories made the front page, as the Darleen Hicks case was now big news. The discovery of the body made it hard to ignore. And there was salacious interest all around, what with the taxi driver’s role and the two men arrested in my apartment. George Walsh also had a piece in the paper that afternoon: “Walsh’s Witticisms,” five jokes, three riddles, and a caricature of the author. I was already planning to have the cartoon image enlarged and framed for display on my desk. As a bonus, Charlie told me that George’s copy had been riddled with typographic errors.

“More than the usual misspellings,” he said with annoyance as I tried not to laugh. “It’s as if he typed it with boxing gloves on. What’s wrong with that man?”

I was sipping some coffee in the back booth at Fiorello’s at about six. Fadge and I had been discussing the case, and I was making notes for an article linking the Hudson girl’s disappearance to Brossard and Darleen Hicks. I wasn’t ready to go to press with it, of course, just outlining the research I would carry out. Fadge wasn’t convinced about the assistant principal and was more interested in the bus driver. I told him Gus Arnold was still on my list, but right now I was 99.44 percent sure that Louis Brossard was my man. Then the phone rang. It was Charlie Reese, looking for me. I slipped into the phone booth and closed the folding door.

“What is it, Chief?” I said.

“The sheriff’s looking for you. He said he and the DA got a search warrant for Louis Brossard’s place, and he’s going over there now. Olney says you can’t go in with him, but he may have a statement for the press if you wait outside.”

“I’m on my way,” I said and hung up.

Three county cars and the DA’s Chrysler New Yorker were parked outside the Northampton Court Apartments. Frank and the Thin Man were inside Brossard’s place, while Pat Halvey and Stan Pulaski stood guard outside, warding off the curious.

The evening sky was clear, and the mercury had fallen below freezing again. I chatted with Stan and Pat for over an hour while the search went on inside. Brossard had called a lawyer, Joe Murray, who was inside making sure the search was kosher. Deputy Spagnola showed up a while later with some coffee for his pals, and Stan offered me his. I told him I’d just had some before arriving, but I wouldn’t mind holding the cup for him. My hands were cold.

Finally, at eight o’clock, the sheriff and DA exited the apartment building with Joe Murray in tow. They made their way over to a red-and-white Chevrolet sedan and proceeded to unlock it with some keys the sheriff was holding. Using flashlights, two deputies climbed inside the car and scanned the floor and seats for evidence. They shoved their hands between the seat cushions, examined the glove box, and then popped open the trunk. They spent a good forty-five minutes going over the car, without any success. At least none that I could see from my distant vantage point.

In the end, Joe Murray was beaming, obviously happy with the results of the search. He bade the sheriff and the DA good night and went back inside to confer with his client. Frank and Don made their way over to me and the deputies.

“You boys can head back to the jail,” said the sheriff. “Don and I have discussed it, and I want you to release Ted Russell. We don’t have anything on him.”

“Just let him go?” asked Pat Halvey.

“Yes. And give him a ride home.”

“Let me guess,” I said once Stan and Pat had gone. “Nothing in the car.”

“Nothing,” said the sheriff.

“Well, what can you expect after four weeks?” said the DA. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t think we’d find anything tonight. If he’s guilty, he’s had plenty of time to dispose of the evidence.”

“Do you think he’s guilty, Don?” I asked.

The Thin Man looked up at the sky and gave it a good think. “I’d put my money on him,” he said. “Proving it is going to be a lot harder, though. No witnesses and no physical evidence linking him to the girl.”

“And no indication that he even left the office early that day,” said the sheriff. “We interviewed the staff and his boss a couple of hours ago. No one can remember that at all.”

“So you think I’m wrong?” I asked.

The sheriff looked down at me and pursed his lips. “No, Ellie. I think you’re right. He’s your man. I spoke to the Hudson chief of police by phone this afternoon. He said Brossard was one of their top suspects. Had the girl in his office for some kind of detention after school that day. But there was another student. A boy, a senior, in the office with them as well. Brossard told the police he dismissed the girl first, but the boy said he was sent away first. Later, the kid changed his story to match Brossard’s, and the cops just couldn’t break their alibis.”

“My God,” I whispered. “That poor girl.”

“Yeah. So now we’ve got to figure out how to nab this guy.”

“You’re going to need some proof,” said the DA. “Because as things stand now, he walks.”

I arrived home a little past ten. I read and reread the AP article Norma had dug out of the archives. It was only twenty lines long, and there was no mention of Louis Brossard or the other student. Still, to no avail, I tried to wring some kind of clue out of that old story. Then I retraced in my head Darleen’s steps on the day she died, hoping for inspiration. But still nothing. Not even a couple of stiff drinks helped. Brossard was guilty, I was convinced. But I had no hope of proving it.

I switched on the television to clear my mind.
What’s My Line?
or
This Is Your Life.
I switched it off again, and the phone rang. It was after ten thirty on a Monday. Well past normal New Holland visiting hours.

“I’ve got to speak to you,” came a vaguely familiar voice from the other end. I couldn’t place it immediately. Shaking and vulnerable, the inflection was confusing me. Then he said it was urgent and called me “Miss Stone.”

“Where are you, Ted?” I asked.

“Fiorello’s,” he answered. “Please. I need to see you right away.”

“I’m in the upstairs apartment across the street. Number forty-six.”

Moments later, the bell rang, and I descended the stairs to open the newly installed door. Ted Jurczyk stood in the cold night air, breathing heavily, as if he’d just finished running line drills on the basketball court. When our eyes met, he started to cry.

“Come on in, Ted,” I said, wrapping an arm around him.

I made him some hot chocolate and waited for him to compose himself. Something had knocked him for a loop. Finally, he wiped his eyes and drew a restorative breath.

“Tell me. What happened?” I asked.

He looked up at me, eyes and nose red, lips chapped. “She’s gone,” he said, and more tears spilled over his eyelids. “I can’t believe she’s really dead.”

I put a hand on his and let him talk.

“I was still hoping, you know. Just hoping she’d left like she said she would.”

“She told you she was leaving?”

He nodded. “The day she disappeared. I met her by the bus. I’m sorry I lied to you that night at the gym,” he said. “I was so scared. I was sure you would try to pin the whole thing on me.”

“I wasn’t gunning for you, Ted.”

“I know that now,” he said, wiping his nose on a napkin.

“What did Darleen say to you that day?” I asked. “It must have been pretty important to risk missing her bus.”

Ted Jurczyk reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a brown paper bag. He placed it on the kitchen table.

“What’s that?”

“It’s Darleen’s diary.”

“She gave this to you?” I asked, picking up the bag. “The day she disappeared?”

Ted nodded. “She told me she had a secret to tell me. She said she was running away for good with Joey Figlio. She wasn’t sure when, but soon, she said.”

“Why did she give you her diary?”

“She said she didn’t want her father to find it. That would spoil everything. She told me not to read it, but to keep it until she sent for it.”

“So, have you read it?” I asked.

“No. I gave her my word.”

“Then why have you brought it to me?”

Ted looked down into his hands. “Because she’s gone. Someone needs to read what she didn’t want her father to know.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

I drove Ted home. It was a school night, and he was out late. As things stood, he was sure he’d be grounded if his father caught him sneaking back in. I pulled to a stop outside the darkened duplex on Polack Hill.

“I just couldn’t read it,” he said. “I didn’t want to know.”

“I won’t lie to you, Ted. It still might have to come out.”

He nodded one last time and popped the door open. He climbed out and disappeared into the dark pathway alongside the house.

Back home at midnight, I tore the cover off the diary; the lock didn’t stand a chance. I poured myself a long drink and settled in on the sofa. The diary took up where the one I’d found in her room had left off more than three years earlier. The months drifted by without anything of interest; Darleen was eleven and twelve at the time, and the entries were about games, friends, and farm animals. But somewhere in the fall of 1958, when she was about to turn thirteen, she started writing about boys. First there was Edward, who, she wrote, was in love with her. She liked Edward very much, but like a brother. Still, it was flattering to have a boy carry your books, send you notes, and buy you sodas in the cafeteria. Darleen got braces on her teeth in September of that year. She liked her dentist, who was a handsome married man. Then she started writing about “crazy Joey Figlio” who was in her seventh-grade homeroom. “He’s in love with me,” she wrote. “I sure do get a lot of attention from boys all of a sudden.”

In October 1958, her entries stopped for three months. Then they resumed tentatively, with short, almost impersonal details. What she wore to school, who she sat with at lunch, what movie she saw. Finally, in the middle of February 1959, her reticence broke wide open. I gasped when I read the matter-of-fact entry: “Dad made me do it again.” Again three weeks later, another brief mention: “Again. I wish he’d leave me alone. I don’t like it, but he goes away if I do what he says.”