No Stone Unturned (43 page)

The sheriff told me he had listened with a dry mouth as Tommy described Jordan’s naked back, her perfect buttocks, her willowy legs—the last image he had of her alive, before his eyes filled with blood, and he grabbed her around the neck. The next thing he remembered was laying her dead body on the bed.

He ran scared, drove up to the lake, and wandered through the woods for about an hour. Then his mind went to work, and he decided he had to move the body before someone discovered it. He drove back to the motel, parked the car a few feet from where it had dripped oil the first time, and returned to Jordan’s room to find the bloody mess. Roy had already been there, and Jordan’s pelvis bore the grizzly wound. Her clothes and purse were gone; things had been rearranged. Tommy was too confused to know exactly what had happened, but he was lucid enough to realize someone had sliced out a piece of Jordan’s flesh.

The sight of her bloodied pelvis sickened Tommy, and, later on, in an irrational state of mind, he convinced himself that someone else had actually murdered her. But at that moment, he hoisted her over his shoulder and carried her out back to his car. Then he returned to snatch the garbage can. Twenty minutes later, he smeared the last of the mud and leaves over her body in Wentworth’s Woods.

Frank asked him about Ginny White, and Tommy gave an economical description of what had happened: Ginny knew he had barged into Jordan’s motel room and would tell the police everything she’d heard on the phone. He took his father’s car to Boston on Saturday afternoon, went to the girls’ apartment, and rang the bell. Ginny felt funny letting him in after the phone conversation with Jordan the night before, but she thought he needed some compassion. When she turned her back, he clubbed her to death with a tire iron he’d grabbed from his father’s trunk. Then he returned home late Saturday night and boarded a bus for Rochester the following morning, arriving at school just hours before I phoned him.

Tommy completed his statement, closed his mouth, and didn’t open it again. He just stared into space. Pat Halvey led him downstairs, shut him in the middle cell, and took up the suicide watch. Frank just shook his head, saddened and numb.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1960

I used the remaining three hours before dawn to write the final story on the Shaw-White murders. When I arrived at the paper at eight o’clock, I strode into Artie Short’s office and handed my copy to the publisher himself. I watched him read it. His expression did nothing to betray his thoughts as his eyes ranged across the lines, one by one. Finally, when he had finished, he tossed the pages back across his desk without even looking at me.

“Print it.”

Two weeks after Tommy Quint’s arrest, Judge Shaw invited me to his law office on Main Street for a late-afternoon meeting. He thanked me on behalf of himself and his wife, who was not present.

“In truth, I doubted you from the first moment I heard about you,” he said. “Fred Peruso assured me you were my best bet, but I was skeptical.”

I didn’t know what to say. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

“But,” he said, pausing for several beats, “you, of course, proved me and my wife wrong. For that, I am grateful to you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever known, Miss Stone. And it’s not gone away. It never will. I suppose you could have told me that the first night we met.”

I watched him, without a word, breathing slowly and deeply. He wouldn’t look at me, just stared at something on the floor somewhere across the room.

“I take no satisfaction that Tommy Quint will pay for this crime. It’s a horrible tragedy in these modern times. Of course I’m relieved that there is a resolution, an end to the . . .” he searched for a word, apparently failed. “An end to the not knowing,” he managed finally. “Now I can mourn my daughter without the added torture of simply not knowing.”

He stopped, looked at me pointedly, and asked if I felt that way about my father. Now it was my turn to look away at nothing in particular.

“It was different with my father,” I said. “I let him down, disappointed him till the day he died, alone in that hospital bed. You didn’t let Jordan down.”

“I suppose it’s not quite the same,” he granted, then fell silent for a long while. “What about that . . . man? That professor?” he asked, uncomfortable with the question and, perhaps, the eventual answer.

“I hope you won’t mind a little indiscretion on my part,” I said, looking up at him again. “I came into possession of a couple of letters Jordan had written to a friend. And there were a couple of snapshots of Jordan and Jerrold holding hands in India.”

The judge stiffened.

“In the letters, Jordan described her love affair with Jerrold.” I paused. “I sent photostatic copies of the letters and prints to Professor Lionel Benjamin, chairman of the Engineering Department and Jerrold’s tenure committee.” I licked my dry lips to moisten them. “And I dispatched copies to Jerrold’s wife, too.”

“And?” asked the judge.

“I’m sorry, but I got word yesterday from the department secretary that Jerrold got his tenure despite the information I sent. I’m afraid my ploy failed.”

Judge Shaw stared blankly at me, and I couldn’t be sure if he was annoyed or not.

“His wife is standing by him, too,” I said. “I can’t imagine why.”

He coughed lightly, but showed no outward emotion at the news.

“What about that Indian fellow?” he asked in a hoarse voice. “You said he was the one who . . . mutilated my poor Jordan.”

“Even if the letters I sent didn’t sink Jerrold, they finished off Roy,” I said. “Jerrold doesn’t protect him anymore and, in fact, blamed him for the embarrassing appearance of the letters. Singh must have assured him that he had collected all incriminating evidence from Jordan’s apartment the day after the murder, so when the letters and photographs surfaced at the tenure meeting, Jerrold assumed he’d been double-crossed. Singh’s father shipped him off to India three days ago.”

I don’t think any of this pleased Judge Harrison Shaw. The cavernous sorrow left by Jordan’s death would remain forever, of course, perhaps becoming familiar with time, but the heartbreak and the cruel sting would surely dog him all his days.

Now, there was only one thorn left to pull. The judge put the question to me with great discomfort: “We read in your paper that there might be . . . film. Photographs of Jordan.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling the sweat on my brow. “Don’t let that trouble you. I invented that story and fed it to George Walsh.”

His dumb expression begged for an explanation.

“I thought the story might flush out the killer.”

“Then you’re sure no photographs of her exist?” asked the judge. “I would choke on my rage if any pictures of her ever turned up.”

“There is no film of her, Judge,” I said, my mouth sticky dry. “You have my word of honor. My promise.”

We talked a while longer, reviewed the last niggling details until there was nothing more to say. Once we’d covered everything, all that was left was an awkward ending. I thought I might be able to help him cope and suggested another meeting if he wanted, anytime he wanted.

Judge Shaw looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Miss Stone,” he said. “I appreciate your fine work on this case, all your efforts. But I see no reason for us to see each other again.”

I was stunned.

“You must understand,” he explained. “This does not establish a social bond between us.” He paused. “In fact, just the opposite.”

If he had gutted me with a knife, I could not have felt more hollow. I left his office sobered, humbled, and filled with self-reproach. What had I been thinking? Harrison Shaw was no father of mine, and I was not his Jordan. I should have wished him well on my way out the door, but I couldn’t do it. I had my own demons to wrestle. The judge and his wife had no monopoly on grief.

I returned home and pulled the heavy Curtis folio off its shelf. I hadn’t looked at the haunting photographs since I’d first developed them, and I didn’t want to see them now. I burned them and their negatives in a metal wastebasket in my bathroom. Mrs. Giannetti banged on the door, wanting to know what the smell was.

About two months later, I ran into Pukey Boyle at the Dew Drop Inn—I had become something of a regular. When I first caught sight of him across the room, I thought, “God, that is a lot of man!” Not my type, perhaps, but a lot of man just the same. It was the first time I’d seen him since that day at the Leatherstocking Motel. Now, in the dim light of the bar, we had several drinks and a couple of pickled eggs together. We talked late into the night, and he asked me if I’d ever heard from Julio Hernandez.

“His mother sent me a thank-you note, but that’s it,” I answered. “I don’t get down to the East End much these days.”

Pukey grunted a chuckle. “The East End? Your boy’s moved up in the world. He’s shacked up with Jean Trent and got himself a brand-new Corvette. I heard they’re getting married. Can you imagine? That old hag?”

I sipped my drink and smiled inside, happy to see Victor Trent’s nest egg finally being put to use.

It was hours later when I found the courage to ask Pukey the question I had tried to ask him in the hospital.

“Why were you following me? Why did you want to protect me?”

“I knew you were on top of things, and I didn’t want anyone getting in your way,” he said with a shrug.

I was flattered. I thought how sweet it was that he’d been carrying a torch for me. He’d probably been too shy to tell me his true feelings. Then he smiled, a little sadly, and looked into his beer.

“You might not understand this, Ellie, coming from a guy like me,” he said. He shook his head slowly, then looked away. “I loved her. I loved her like you can’t imagine.”

And, yes, I felt like a chump. I laughed silently at myself and thought what a great guy Pukey Boyle had turned out to be. I touched his hand to comfort him and to convey that I understood. Our eyes met, and I shared a smile in the dark with my hero, my paperboy.

A book is made by a lot of people. My books have been made better by the great team at Seventh Street Books. I am grateful in particular to Dan Mayer, editorial director, who tears apart my plots, looking for holes to plug and logic to correct; Mariel Bard, editor, who ferrets out the buried errors in my manuscripts and polishes my words; Meghan Quinn, publicist, who works so hard and cheerfully to get my books seen and read; and Jackie Cooke, senior graphics designer, who produced the beautifully evocative covers for
Styx & Stone
and
No Stone Unturned
.