The Judgment (45 page)

That was probably why they’d assigned it to Majeski, in his mid-twenties and the youngest man on the Kerry County police force. More important, he’d had a little less than a year in a patrol car, so they tucked him off in a corner of the grid they’d drawn around Hub City. One thing about Copper Creek Road, however: It’s damned tricky to drive it even in good weather. There aren’t many straight stretches on it. Winding along the creek bed, it runs from Pickeral Point, meets Beulah Road out in the country someplace, then gets lost way up in the northwestern reaches of the county.

This was the road, in any case, that Officer Steve Majeski was patrolling that night. He’d been fighting the snow for four hours and was bored and close to exhaustion. He rounded a bend, and just beyond his high beams, he saw a car’s lights come on. A second later those lights began to move, swing out, disappear; Majeski had the presence of mind to punch his odometer to mark the location, then went after the vehicle, whatever it was, with his siren going full blast. In decent road conditions, he would have caught up with it without difficulty, but in the snow, it was an unequal pursuit. The Caprice, with its big engine, was just too much car for the road. In his eagerness to overtake the car ahead, he kept his foot heavy on the gas, too heavy, and the Chevy slowed back and forth in the snow at every curve, while the one ahead went around each bend like it was on rails. Majeski realized he was chasing some sort of four-wheel-drive vehicle. Still, he managed to keep
it
in sight. As he would emerge perilously
from one curve, whipping the steering wheel left and right, he would see his quarry disappearing around the next. So it went until he hit the straightaway leading to the junction with Beulah Road. Majeski picked up speed and saw that the general shape of the car ahead conformed to that of a so-called off-road vehicle, but he couldn’t get close enough to read the license plate. He tried a little too hard to do that and still had his foot on the accelerator as the junction loomed up ahead. The off-roader made the turn onto Beulah Road, but Majeski’s patrol car did not.

The Caprice made two complete revolutions in the middle of the intersection, then ended up in a ditch by the side of the road. It was in deep, snow up to his hubcaps. Majeski hadn’t a chance in the world of getting it out. Because he’d had his hands full during the chase, he hadn’t radioed in. He did that at last, giving his position and asking for help, telling what had happened, and describing how the off-roader somehow slipped through. Taking the reading from the odometer in his own patrol car, he was able to guide his rescuer back to the approximate place where the pursuit began. After a bit of searching, they found the body of a young boy, sheathed in plastic, half covered in snow.

By the time Sue finished telling the story, we were on Copper Creek Road and close to the crime scene. She had had it only in fragments she’d heard from the radio dispatcher, then direct from Officer Majeski before she headed out to my place. But it seemed to do her good to tell it to me. She was less distraught and more professional in manner, apparently ready to meet what lay ahead. I only hoped that I was, too.

There was a cop stationed in the road to direct traffic around the line of patrol cars on the right. He stopped us with his flashlight, then walked up when he recognized the county plate on our car.

When he stuck his head in the window, I recognized him, more or less, but couldn’t come up with his name.

“Yeah, hi, Sue. Just pull in behind my car there.”

She nodded and mumbled a few words I didn’t catch.

“We kept a clean scene for you this time,” he said. “I guess we’re learning the hard way.”

A swirl of snow swept into the car before she could get the window up. She guided her car into the spot to which she’d been directed, then cut the motor and killed the lights.

“Stay close to me, Charley, unless I tell you different,” she said, now the complete professional.

“Fair enough,” I agreed.

I followed in her footsteps, shuffling through the soft snow. There was a wet hard pack beneath it. All told, I thought about three inches had fallen. The temperature had dropped steadily, and it had to be well down in the twenties. I was glad I’d worn my snow boots and remembered my new gloves.

Emergency lights running off the generators of two of the patrol cars were pointed at a mound in the snow beyond the yellow tape. There was a slight glint on the plastic and an indication of flesh color beneath it where the face would be. If they left the corpse undisturbed, it would be only a matter of minutes until it would be invisible beneath the snow. There was just one set of footprints leading up to the mound.

“All right,” said Sue, “who was it just had to take a look? Who tracked up there to the body?”

“It was me.” The cop’s name was Bert Bossey. I knew him from a trial a year ago, a tough, no-nonsense police officer. He stepped forward to face her. “We were the first on the scene. Steve Majeski found the body; because I was senior officer, I took charge.”

“Did that mean you had to mess things up like that?”

“For Christ’s sake, Sue, I had to see if the kid was dead.”

“You satisfied that he is?”

“Yeah, I cut into the plastic, felt for a pulse and didn’t get any, then I tried for a heartbeat. Nothing.”

All the cops were edgy because they were tired. They’d
been out a long time, and the effort they’d put in patrolling the roads had gone for nothing. And the proof of that was before them right there under the lights.

“Larry?” she called out. “Are you here?”

Larry Antonovich came forward, a camera in hand. Sue took him over to one side. The two detectives held a hurried conference in whispers. One or two of the cops, those who recognized me, looked at me curiously, all but asking out loud what I was doing there.

As they talked on, flashing lights down the road caught my eye. The cops saw it, too, but barely glanced up. It was all part of the routine. It was moving along from the direction we had come at a speed so deliberate that the flashing lights in the rack on the roof seemed altogether unnecessary. It looked like an ambulance, but it turned out to be the county coroner’s van from Pickeral Point. Identification was emblazoned in big letters on the side.

They pulled up on the highway just opposite the yellow tape, and there they waited, motor running. The window came down on the passenger’s side.

“How long?” came the call from inside.

“Not long,” Sue called back.

The window rolled back up. The snow had slacked off, nearly stopped. Sue took a deep breath, led Antonovich to the tape, and ducked under, approaching the body from one side. Did she intend that I should accompany her? She must have remembered me at the last moment, for she looked back and made a quick gesture that told me to stay where I was. Antonovich ducked under. I noticed that in addition to the camera, he had something that looked like a screen under his arm, about a foot-and-a-half square.

He began taking pictures, circling the mound, getting it from every angle. Sue produced a carpenter’s tape from her coat pocket and called over one of the cops, telling him to measure from the edge of the road. She took it to the mound and noted the figure in a notebook, all business but not a glance at the small window left uncovered by the snow. When Antonovich had finished that round of
picture taking, she carefully scooped the snow from the plastic wrap and placed it on the screen, yet doing it in such a way that her eyes never seemed to leave her hands. She stepped away and sifted the snow through the screen. Nothing stuck; it was all snow and nothing more. Antonovich took more pictures. Then Sue beckoned in the direction óf the county coroner’s van, and the two inside got out, opened up the back, and pulled out a stretcher.

They weren’t so careful once they’d stepped inside the perimeter. Sue warned them away from the direct route and made them take the circular way that she and Larry Antonovich had taken. In any case, the body was shifted onto the stretcher and moved in less than a minute. Somehow she managed to be looking the other way through it all. More pictures of the spot where the body had lain, then they both went to work sifting through the snow beneath the resting place and all around it—again, nothing, nothing but snow. Finished, they left a marker, and returned the long way around.

“Steve Majeski?” Sue called. “I need to get a statement from you.”

She produced a small hand-held tape recorder from that voluminous coat pocket and talked him through the chase from this point to Beulah Road, a good three miles, and she wanted all the details.

Sue was doing pretty well through this ordeal she had dreaded. She recovered well after a bad start by admitting her error to the cops assembled at the scene. Whatever help she supposed I might provide was unneeded.

How was I doing? Not quite so well.

Standing by myself, off to one side, I had looked on, not so much with interest but with fascination. Every time Sue turned away from that mound nearly covered by snow, I found myself staring at it. I wasn’t even sure of the contents of that plastic-wrapped package. I hadn’t heard whether it was a boy or a girl inside, only that it was a child. Another child, the fourth in this monstrous chain of killings. It had to be a kind of monster responsible,
didn’t it? There was such a confusion of purpose evident: the care taken with the bodies, clothes washed, the plastic shroud to protect each one from the snow. Yes, the snow. What did that mean? Clearly, it meant a great deal to the murderer. What was the snow symbolizing? Purity? Theirs, not his? How could you get into such a mind to even begin to guess what went on there?

I thought I’d distanced myself pretty well from the county coroner’s team as they returned with the small body on the stretcher. Yet as they came, the cops seemed to drift away, leaving me alone, the only one within calling distance when they cleared the yellow tape.

Me? I was staring in spite of myself.

“Hey buddy, want to give us a hand here? Come on over and open the door to the van.”

I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t say, “Get one of those cops to help you—they’ve seen more death than I have, more than I ever want to.” No, I couldn’t say that, so I nodded and went to help.

It was a boy. Dark haired and darker skinned than was usual in this county of Slavs, Scandinavians, and Celtics. His features suggested he might have a bit of Indian blood. Though his eyes were shut, his mouth was stern. He looked angry. I’ll bet he’d put up a fight.

I walked away. My vision was blurred. Hell, who am I kidding? I was half blind from the tears that wouldn’t stop. I wiped at them, then more sobs came and more tears. So I just kept walking, trying to get away. I heard the county coroner’s van turn around in the road and start on its trip back. Finally, I was surprised when I heard Sue’s voice calling me back, not so much that she called but that her voice was so distant. I turned around and saw that I was a good city block away.

“Charley,” she called. “Where are you? Charley!”

She must have lost me in the darkness. I cleared my throat and yelled back as loudly as I was able, “I’m here. I’m coming, I’m coming.”

On the drive back to Pickeral Point, neither Sue nor Larry Antonovich said a word about my disappearance. Not much was said at all. But I had a question.

“Who was the boy?”

“We don’t know yet,” said Sue.

“No missing child reported? What did Hub City have to say?”

“Nothing there. We just don’t know.”

“Strange.”

Yes, it was strange. Could the boy have been picked off the streets of Detroit? Port Huron? Mt. Clemens? Wherever he had come from, he had parents who missed him, lost him, who were frantic to find him. The dead boy in plastic wrap on the stretcher looked like he was about the same age as the first three victims. He couldn’t have been a runaway, not likely at that age.

When we came to Pickeral Point, Sue headed for Kerry County Police Headquarters. Larry Antonovich was to be dropped off there. He had been driving up and down Beulah Road with one of the two cars assigned to that stretch. The idea was to have one detective rolling and Sue back at headquarters to coordinate things. He was young, from Detroit, and had gone to Wayne State.

“Wouldn’t it be nice,” he said to Sue, “if we had a crime-scene squad like a big grown-up police department?”

“Not likely,” said Sue, “with all the budget cuts.”

“I hope these pictures I took come out. You think there was enough light out there?”

“You’d know that better than I would, Larry. I’m no photographer.”

He was quiet for a moment. “They’ll be okay, I guess.”

She pulled up in the lot, which was nearly empty by now, well after midnight. Antonovich got out, taking his camera equipment with him.

“I’ll leave the film with a note before I go. If George Bester gets right on it, the roll should be printed by mid-morning.”

“Do that. I’ll be back by eleven. We’ll go to the location on Copper Creek Road then.” “I don’t envy you.”

Sue drove out of the parking lot and turned in the direction of my place. She turned to me.

“Charley, I was wondering …”

I knew that approach, and I thought I knew what her request would be.

“Sure, Sue, you can stay with me tonight.”

“You really know me inside and out, don’t you?”

“Let’s just say I know you pretty well by how.”

We drove in silence for a block or two.

“I got off on the wrong foot with the cops, didn’t I? Of course Bossey was right. He had to make sure the kid was dead.”

“But you handled it right from then on.”

“There’s a few things different about this one, you know.”

“Well, for one thing,” I said, “no report of a missing child. You don’t know who the kid is.”

“Right, but finding him on Copper Creek Road is sort of odd—miles from Hub City. The location was a lot closer to town, this town, than any of the others. And there was something else, too.”

“What’s that?”

“Larry said it looked like the kid’s clothes were dirty—not filthy or anything, just like he’d been out in the snow—his hands, too, the way kids get dirty playing anyplace. I didn’t see it myself. I made it a point not to look at the body.”