Stone Cold Dead (48 page)

But on the bright side, as I sat up in my bed, I had my answer.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1961

The fear must have cleared my head. Or perhaps it was like a crossword puzzle after all. Eventually, even the toughest word falls. Even the hardest puzzle can be solved.

It was still dark, but morning wasn’t far off. I couldn’t call the sheriff at this hour, so I plotted out what needed to be done. Frank would need to arrest Brossard and get him to sign a statement in the presence of his lawyer. That would take several hours, I figured, but it couldn’t be helped. It was essential to the integrity of my plan, which was still just a hunch and almost a shot in the dark. But I had nothing else. And if this didn’t pan out, Brossard would be in the clear. Without witnesses and with no physical evidence, he may have achieved the perfect murder. For the second time. But only if I was wrong. The other help I needed from the sheriff was a second search of Brossard’s car.

At seven, I dialed Frank Olney’s home number and told him my idea. It took a few minutes to convince him that there was no harm in trying it and that the alternative was to do nothing at all. In the end, he thought he could get Brossard and his lawyer to give a statement by early afternoon.

“There’s one more thing, Frank,” I said hesitantly. “Last night I got a threatening phone call. I’m not sure if it was Brossard or Dick Metzger, though I’m leaning toward Metzger.”

“What did he say?”

“He called me a dirty, little slut and said he was going to get me for what I did.”

“Holy hell,” he said. “I’ll post someone to watch your place tonight. In the meantime, get a locksmith and a carpenter in this morning and replace your kitchen door with something more secure. Will your landlady let you do that?”

“Not likely,” I said.

“Well, put it in and ask for forgiveness later.”

I phoned Charlie Reese next and told him my plans. He, too, was uncertain, but agreed it was the only option at the moment. He also thought I should secure my kitchen door, and he recommended Milchiore’s Hardware on Main.

I soon realized that a new door was out of the question on such short notice, but by noon, Dave Milchiore had installed a big brass Segal deadbolt on my kitchen door. He told me Segal had gone out of business, but this was still the best lock on the market. He lost me when he started talking about pins and cylinders. I just wanted something to keep people out.

“Of course a professional lock picker could open this,” he said. “But we don’t have any of those in New Holland.”

“I thought you said it was the best on the market.”

“Well, the best in the store, anyway,” he said. “But don’t worry. This will keep people out. And the bars on the window and the three surface bolts I put in make this door the safest in the city.”

It did appear to be secure. Burglar bars on the kitchen window, a new deadbolt, and three surface bolts anchoring the door to the head, the jamb, and the threshold.

“Thank you, Mr. Milchiore,” I said. “Just one more thing. Could you come back after dark and sleep on the landing?”

Looking both ways as I stepped off the porch, I could see no green Ford pickup truck anywhere on the street. I wasn’t worried about Louis Brossard’s red-and-white Chevy; Frank Olney had phoned me at ten thirty to say the assistant principal was safely in custody. He phoned again at eleven to tell me Joe Murray had showed up to spring him. Frank played his part well, saying he was going to hold Brossard no matter what Murray said, but in the end agreed to let him go after he gave and signed a statement.

In the meantime, Don Czerulniak had managed to secure a second search warrant for Brossard’s car. The judge was disinclined to grant it, but finally agreed, stipulating that this was the last search he would authorize. The State could not continue harassing the man without good cause.

I showed up at the sheriff’s office, just as Brossard was being released to his lawyer. He wouldn’t look me in the eye, and he said nothing. That’s when Don and Frank emerged from Frank’s office and broke the news to Joe Murray that they were going to have one more look at Brossard’s car.

“Go ahead,” said Murray, once he’d given the warrant the once over. “You’re spinning your wheels.”

Brossard seemed confident this was a fishing expedition. Still, he was eager to get the search over with. He’d been dragged out of the junior high by the sheriff in front of his colleagues, his boss, and dozens of students, and he was itching to return as soon as possible to flaunt his innocence.

Frank announced to everyone present that the car had already been towed to the jail by a wrecker and was sitting in the impound garage out back. Murray told him to get on with it. Brossard looked impatient.

I, on the other hand, was a bundle of nerves. It was one thing to come up with a clever guess, but quite another to prove it. And what if I was dead wrong? This could end up a major embarrassment for me and the sheriff. My empty stomach growled as we stepped outside and circled around to the garage.

Frank asked for the keys, and Brossard produced them. The sheriff handed them to Deputy Brunello, who unlocked the door. Frank invited Joe Murray to observe with him as a mechanic appeared with a tool box.

“Okay,” said the sheriff. “I want the front seat of the car removed.” He looked at Brossard then Joe Murray. “Very carefully.”

The mechanic stuck his head into the car, first from the driver’s side, then from the passenger’s side. Using a wrench, he unbolted the seat from the floor, and then two deputies helped him slide the bench seat out of the car.

“Lay it down on its back,” said Frank to the men. Then to Joe Murray. “Let’s have a look.”

My heart was galloping, and I thought I might faint from the anticipation and my hunger. This was the moment when I would know if Brossard had slipped the knot and would escape, or if he would pay for his crime.

“What is this circus?” asked Joe Murray as they reached the seat.

Frank stooped to look under the seat. His face betrayed no emotion. Joe Murray scanned the underside from the driver’s end to the passenger’s. He squinted. The first sign that my career might survive another day. Then he reached out to touch the fabric, but the sheriff stopped him.

“Don’t touch it,” he said. “That’s evidence.”

A tingle crawled up my neck. I closed my eyes and stifled a short gasp.

“What is it?” asked Murray.

“That,” said the sheriff, “is gum. Black Jack chewing gum, if I’m not mistaken.”

I actually lost my balance and stumbled. Stan Pulaski was standing nearby and caught me before I hit the ground. I was starving, my blood sugar low again, and I felt overwhelmed by emotions.

“So what’s that prove?” asked the lawyer. “Anyone could have put that there.”

“That’s true,” said Frank. “But whoever put it there left a perfect fingerprint right in the middle.”

Brossard collapsed to the ground. No one caught him.

There really wasn’t much Louis Brossard could say. His lawyer, Joe Murray, was also at a loss for words. His client had just signed a statement, swearing that Darleen Hicks had never been in his car. Not on the day she disappeared and never before then either. Now, with a perfectly preserved fingerprint squashed into a wad of Black Jack gum stuck to the underside of his car’s front seat, Brossard knew it was over. He didn’t try to deny it any longer. Frank told me the whole story after the assistant principal had confessed.

“The guilt was too much for him,” said the sheriff, sipping his coffee. “Once he realized that Darleen had stuck her gum under the car seat, he just wanted to get the whole thing off his chest.”

“What about the St. Winifred’s girl?” I asked.

“Yeah, he copped to that, too. Hudson police are sending a man up to take a confession from him.”

“So how did it all happen?”

“Pretty much like you thought,” said Frank. “Brossard investigated the Ted Russell thing and said he couldn’t stop thinking of the girl. He said she was so cute and mischievous. That’s what gets his motor running, it seems. He likes young girls, but only the ones with the devil in their smile. That’s how he put it.”

“He didn’t like me at all. I was convinced he didn’t like girls, but it turns out I was too old for him.”

Frank shook his head. “I feel sorry for guys like him.”

“What?”

“Not like that,” he said. “A deviant may be able to stop himself from committing these ‘abominations against God,’ as Brossard put it. But he can’t help having the urges in the first place. They just come to him. From Satan, he says.”

“So he was beguiled by a fifteen-year-old temptress,” I said sarcastically. “How did it all play out?”

“Like I said, he became obsessed with her. Tried to talk to her at school, sent some notes asking to meet her, called her down to his office on the slightest pretext, phoned her at home a few times. She asked him for money, and he refused. Then, on the day she disappeared, he saw her from his office window getting off the bus in the parking lot. He watched her talking to a boy, then the bus drove off. She loitered around for a few minutes, and she left the parking lot. He had the idea he could give her a lift home. He swears he had no other intentions but to give her a ride.” Frank wiped his dry mouth. “He saw her get into a taxi on Mill Street, and he followed in his car.”

“Then the cab dumped her on the side of the road, and the vulture swooped in.”

“That’s about right,” said Frank. “He drove her to the snow hills and tried to get friendly with her. She wasn’t interested. But the devil had taken control of his mind, he said. He touched her, fondled her, reached under her dress and . . .” Frank stopped. “Well, you get the picture. She slapped him hard and called him names, then managed to pull away and jump out of the car. She ran through the woods alongside the hills. That must have been when she lost her gloves. He chased after her, caught her in the woods near the clearing on the other side. She screamed and he put his hand over her mouth to shut her up. When she went limp, he kissed her, and she screamed again. He grabbed her by the neck, and she was dead before he realized what he was doing.”

I listened with horror. I had known that she’d been strangled, of course, but the sheriff’s hoarse-voiced narrative brought it painfully to life. I took a sip of water, cleared my throat, and wiped my eyes.

“Then he buried her in the snow?” I asked.

Frank nodded. “Brossard had the superintendent’s banquet that evening, and it was getting late. He couldn’t dispose of the body at that moment, so he buried her in the snow, thinking he would come back later that night to move her.”

“But he forgot the lunch box.”

“Exactly. He was quite drunk when he returned to the hills after the banquet. ‘The devil had commandeered my soul,’ he kept saying. Over and over. None of it was his fault. It was the devil. He grabbed the body but forgot the lunch box.”

“And then he drove to the Mill Street Bridge?”

“He had the idea of dumping her in the river because the ground was too hard to dig. He knew the snow would melt by spring, exposing the body, and he thought why not flush her down the river instead. She’d end up miles from here by the time someone found her. So he drove down to the river near Lock 11. But the river was frozen, so he doubled back to New Holland. He saw the river running under the Mill Street Bridge and, in his drunken, possessed state, thought that was his best option. It was late. The town was asleep, and it would only take a minute to toss the body over.”