THE RIGHT TIME TO DIE (30 page)

They had come to a burial plot over which the soil was freshly turned. Jordy stopped walking.

“Didn’t like her, did you?”

Why bother to lie? She said, “No.”

Jordy said, “That’s okay; she never liked you, neither.”

Jenny crushed her cigarette beneath her heel. “Fuck off, shit-head,” she said. “Fuck off and die.”

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

THEY FILED INTO
the church, alone and in pairs, as couples and in groups, each attending as much from curiosity as to pay their final respects. Family, friends of family, solitary mourners and schoolmates gathered together in clusters, as if unwilling to bear the burden of the proceedings alone.

As is typically the case with any large assembly and despite the gravity of the circumstances, there seemed that day to be a spontaneous and unexpected atmosphere of almost carnival-like levity. People spoke too loudly, laughed inappropriately or too often and greeted each other as if attending a wedding rather than a funeral. (But in keeping entirely with what the Reverend Cassie McMaster would later in the service describe as an occasion to
Celebrate a life!
rather than to mourn its passing, as if in her thirteen short years Missy could be said to have had a life.)

Inside the church, immediately to the left of the altar, two pews had been reserved for the family. Earlier, an assortment of floral tributes had been removed from the Shuttleworth and Brown Funeral Parlor and transported to the chapel. Like oil in water, the sweet scent of roses, carnations and lilies mingled with the indelible odor of candle wax and incense to create an evocative, though not necessarily unpleasant, bouquet. Sunlight filtered like a kaleidoscope through a solitary stained glass window.

Though most would not be able to name it, the organist played
The Dream of Gerontius
, an Elgar composition commissioned by the Birmingham England Festival Committee and first performed in October of nineteen hundred. Based on the poem by Cardinal John Newman, it had been the welcoming hymn at the funeral mass at St. Albans for Cardinal Robert Alexander Kennedy Runcie, former Archbishop of Canterbury. Cassie McMaster had attended that event, having applied for and received, at the time, a special dispensation to finance the trip from church funds. In both music and words it was a fitting tribute: to Cardinal Runcie, and likewise to her niece.

One week to the day she was discovered in the alley behind her father’s store and lacking sufficient cause not to, Abby Friedman released the body of Missy Bitson to the care of Shuttleworth and Brown Funeral Home. Though degradation was apparent it was not yet severe.

Working all-day and late into the evening, by Monday morning the principals at Shuttleworth and Brown had effected a reasonable, if not exact, representation of the dead girl, thus saving the aggrieved parents the added indignity and inevitable innuendo of a closed casket ceremony. Missy’s complexion was off, commented some, and her cheeks too wide, noted others. The nose was much too flat (serving to highlight her African American roots), but in all, most agreed that Missy appeared peaceful and life-like, contrary to the circumstances surrounding her violent death.

On the church steps, Dojcsak smoked. Sara shuffled her feet restlessly while Christopher Burke scanned the gathering as if searching for visible evidence of apparent guilt. Anticipating a crowd larger than could be accommodated within the church, Cassie McMaster had ordered loudspeakers to be erected outside, in order that those wishing could accompany in song and prayer those sitting inside.

“Just like the movies,” Burke said. “Do you think the killer is here?”

“Odds are,” said Sara. “Half the town is here, Chris.”

The casket had not yet arrived. Christopher was right, Dojcsak thought. Not so much like a movie, but the nightly network news, the scene reminiscent of images of the post Columbine tragedy or Sandy Hook, and the subsequent burials, attended in the hundreds by visitors acquainted only remotely with the deceased.

“Should have called in the Highway Patrol,” said Dojcsak referring to the street and a scrum of haphazardly and illegally parked vehicles.

When it arrived, it was necessary for Burke to clear a space for the hearse to park, together with the limousine transporting immediate family members. Regardless of her mortal popularity, in death Missy Bitson had certainly managed to draw a crowd, confirming to Dojcsak once again the legitimacy of the six degrees of separation. (Or is it Kevin Bacon? Inwardly, for the first time that day, Dojcsak smiled.)

Among the pallbearers was Jordy Bitson. Wearing a dark suit with white shirt and dark tie, Jordy appeared somber, though not exactly stricken by grief: diminutive yet somehow menacing, Sara observed. Maggie Bitson followed her daughter’s casket, unsteady, supported on one arm by Eugene, on the other by Mandy. Backlit by the bright sunshine, Sara noted that Mandy’s dress appeared to be navy, not black. In the afternoon light and at the right angle, her silhouette showed provocatively, and while Mandy wore panties she undoubtedly had not thought—or chosen—to wear a slip. (What is her mother thinking? Sara thought, unconsciously recalling her own mother’s admonition:
you shouldn’t be looking
.)

Inside, standing with Sara at the rear of the church, Dojcsak appeared ill, as if afflicted with flu. “Sit, Ed, before you collapse,” she whispered. Dojcsak waved her off even as he felt himself waver. Burke scanned the crowd, still searching diligently for visible evidence of apparent guilt, his attention mostly on Eugene, as if the double whammy of grief and contrition might force him to fall wailing upon his daughter’s casket in a combined plea for mercy and salvation. (Burke would like to prove Eugene guilty, if only to contradict Ed.)

Cassie McMaster stood at the altar, administering to the victim what Burke assumed, but couldn’t precisely be sure, was the equivalent of
Last Rites
. At almost six foot, she was imposing, the sermon authoritative in both timbre and intent. Did Cassie wear clothing beneath her vestments, he mused? If so, was it street clothing or merely panties and bra? Burke imagined her naked beneath her devotional garb. His libido stirred. He sensed Pridmore beside him, watching disapprovingly, as if reading his thoughts. Unbidden, he imagined a three-way including Sara and Cassie; as a Catholic in an Episcopal Church, Burke was inclined to experience neither guilt nor shame.

They had reached
The Commendation
. The congregation was ordered to stand while Cassie read: “Our sister has fallen asleep in the peace of Christ. We commit her, with faith and hope in everlasting life, to the loving mercy of our Father, and assist her with our prayers. In baptism she was made by adoption a child of God. At the Lord’s Table she was sustained and fed. May she now be welcomed at the Table of God’s children in Heaven and share in eternal life with all the Saints.”

When finished, Cassie asked the congregation to be seated while the organist played,
The Lark Ascending
, by Ralph Vaughan Williams. She considered this piece to be one of the twentieth century’s most evocative Pastorals, described by Williams himself as
an English landscape transcribed into musical terms
. Outside, feedback reverberated from the makeshift speaker system, for Cassie somewhat tarnishing the effect.

Placed four rows back from the Alter and physically removed from his immediate family, Leland McMaster sat with his wife, the death of his granddaughter apparently unable to breach the schism borne of emotional estrangement and time. Sitting in her wheel chair, Helen partially blocked the center aisle: younger than her husband by a dozen years, she was now ravaged, looking a dozen years his senior, her body an image of premature decay.

Alcohol had wreaked havoc on the physiological body and spiritual soul of Helen McMaster. Dojcsak recognized the signs of acute drink. A habitual DUI, Dojcsak recalled how, on many occasions as a young deputy, he had been called upon to detain the forty-something Helen for driving her Cadillac recklessly about town while under the influence. Often at the request of her husband—Leland unwilling to subject his reputation to the humiliation of having to do it himself—Dojcsak was summoned to retrieve the drunken wife from a local bar, to rescue her from the groping and clutching grasp of a drunken stranger. Generally on these occasions, Dojcsak himself was forced on the drive home to resist Helen’s alcohol fueled sexual advances.

With her bottle blonde hair askew, lipstick running in a splotch of wild color from mouth to cheek, and with her skirt hiked well beyond the point of decency, Dojcsak wondered why Leland didn’t simply divorce the woman and have done with it. She was, after all, a nuisance and a disgrace. She could not possibly be an accommodating partner or able mother to her young family. Only later did Dojcsak understand that for Helen, alcohol was a symptom of a more insidious disease.

Afterward, at the home of Maggie and Eugene Bitson, there was food and drink. Believing it would at best be unsympathetic and at worst an unnecessary provocation, Dojcsak decided neither Pridmore nor Burke should attend.

As a neighbor, though six blocks (six degrees?) removed, Dojcsak attended as a private citizen. He mingled among the mourners, as if by telepathy hoping to feel their pain. Dojcsak helped himself to refreshments; beer, mini-sausages, buns, assorted cold cuts, cheese cubes and sliced vegetables with some type of creamy dip that Dojcsak feared might upset his stomach.

Faces both familiar and not so familiar passed through his line of vision, reluctant to engage the County Sheriff in conversation. Understandable, he decided. What could they say?
Any leads Ed?
realizing even then the most reasonable suspects were here in the room with them. (Dojcsak wished Rena were here as a distraction, so as for him not to appear so conspicuous.)

Many of Missy’s friends had returned to school after the service, judiciously eschewing the Bitson home, while others used the funeral as an excuse to skip class. Only a few, of who Dojcsak assumed to be close friends, were present.

Stomach churning as he expected, Dojcsak helped himself to a third beer, loosened the knot in his necktie and ruminated on what might be a respectable time before leaving. It would be indelicate to initiate an interrogation here, and besides, Dojcsak lacked the enthusiasm. Across the room, Cassie McMaster pulled herself from a small knot of mourners, moving in Dojcsak’s direction like a battle ship, standing opposite him as if to speak.

Before she could, he said, “I’m sorry.”

“Why be sorry? You didn’t kill her.”

“Figure of speech. It was a fine service.”

She eyed his beer critically. “I’m glad you approve. It’s more difficult when it’s someone close. Harder to draw comfort from the words, to believe they’re anything but empty rhetoric, even when I’m delivering them myself.” Cassie’s dark hair was a sharp contrast to her pale skin. She was gaunt and drawn, but still an obviously attractive woman. “It’s the first time I’ve presided over the burial of a family member. Not much solace in that, almost enough to shake your faith in your chosen vocation. In fact, it’s enough to shake your faith in God.” Cassie smiled, irony rather than humor.

“Rena tells me you’ll bury
our
daughter.”

“Unless you have other plans.”

Dojcsak shrugged. “No,” he said. “No other plans; without a miracle, she’ll die.”

Cassie sipped from a glass of red wine. “And you, Sheriff?”

“
Me
,
die
? Eventually, yes, I suppose.”

“Faith, Sheriff, I was speaking of your faith. Is yours shaken by this?”

Dojcsak, presuming she was speaking of the murder, replied thoughtfully, “Well, for it to be shaken, I suppose I’d have had to have it in the first place.”

“A cynic.”

“A pragmatist, Reverend.”

“Call me Cassie. Only my parishioners refer to me as
Reverend
and to my knowledge, you don’t attend church.”

Dojcsak smiled. “As I say, I’m a pragmatist.”

“Without faith? No, Sheriff: that’s an optimist.”

“No; an optimist
expects
the best. When it doesn’t occur, he
hopes
for the best. I neither expect nor hope either way.”

“I
hope
you’re able to muster more conviction for the investigation of Missy’s killing, Sheriff. You don’t inspire great confidence.”

“Except for the obvious, my conviction has less to do with the outcome than chance, I’m afraid. The
chance
someone will come forward to tell us what they know; the
chance
we find a clue that points us to the killer; the
chance
he’ll confess. Who knows?”

Dojcsak shrugged his shoulders while aggressively massaging his cheeks. He hadn’t shaved since before the funeral service: without a razor, he seemed intent to rub the whiskers clean from his face with the palm of a calloused hand. Cassie noted this, putting it down to the unseasonable spring heat combined with what appeared to be a painful looking rash spread across the skin of the Sheriff’s jowls and lower jaw.