The Church of Dead Girls (34 page)

“During, I think.”

Ryan thought he heard a touch of malice in her voice. He decided to change the subject. “I'm curious about your relationship with Donald Malloy.”

Mrs. Porter looked at him sharply. “I assure you it's entirely professional.”

“Do you know anything about his life outside the pharmacy?”

“Nothing. Of course, I know his brother and how upset Donald's been about his niece. . . .”

“What about before Sharon's disappearance?”

“I know nothing about his private life.”

“Do you know if he dates women in town?”

“He's never mentioned anyone. He doesn't talk much and I expect he values me partly because I don't talk either.”

“Do you like him?”

“We have an entirely satisfactory professional relationship.”

“Is that what he calls it, ‘a professional relationship'?”

“Of course not—that's what it is.”

“Do you know if Donald ever was with Janice McNeal?”

“I know nothing of the kind.”

“But he talked to her.”

“He waited on her a number of times. I said that before.”

“Did he sell her condoms?”

“Perhaps.”

“Does Donald have friends?”

“He's close to his brother's family and Paul Leimbach's.”

“Did you ever see him at Janice's house?”

“Never. What are you suggesting?”

Ryan said later he couldn't stop thinking about Mrs. Porter and Aaron. It should be repeated there was noticing sexual about her. Though well-dressed and in good physical condition, she gave not the slightest hint of the provocative. Yet Ryan imagined Aaron and Mrs. Porter rolling naked in her bed. He felt embarrassed during the entire conversation. He was terrified that he would blush and consequently he blushed.

—

Captain Percy's new interest in professional men included a dentist, the lawyer Henry Swazey, Paul Leimbach and Dr. Malloy, and a local architect, as well as Donald. All were interviewed. Soon Percy learned that Donald had dated three women some years before and that he had had sex with one of them, Joan Thompson, a nurse at the hospital. She was forty and single, though she said she had a steady boyfriend.

“I hardly remember Donald Malloy,” she told Ryan. “That was years ago.”

“Was there anything in any way remarkable about him?” asked Ryan. They spoke in the hospital cafeteria. Joan Thompson wore a white nurse's uniform with a little cap.

“Nothing. Maybe that's remarkable by itself. He was quite dull. We'd go out to dinner and he'd hardly speak.”

“How did you happen to meet him?”

“Through his brother, the poor man. Then Donald called me. Or perhaps I called him, I don't remember.”

“What was he like in bed?” Ryan hated questions like this.

“Forgettable.” Joan Thompson laughed. “Or at least I've forgotten. It only happened once or twice. He didn't seem very interested. But he was very clean, I remember that, and he had beautiful hands.”

Ryan also visited Leimbach. They spoke in a back room at the Friends of Sharon Malloy. In the front room phones kept ringing. Twenty people were at work. Ryan felt something was wrong. Then he realized that he heard no laughter.

Leimbach sat at a desk. He tended to bite off his words, giving his speech a rapid-fire quality. He wore a dark suit and a blue striped tie that was perfectly knotted.

“I don't see that my relationship with my wife is anybody's business,” Leimbach was saying.

“It's not your relationship with your wife but your relationship with other women.”

Leimbach unwillingly confessed to having seen a woman in Syracuse two or three times.

“But all of it was a long time ago,” he said. He sat with his hands flat on the desk in front of him.

“Do you see yourself as a professional man?” Even as Ryan asked the question, he knew that he had phrased it clumsily.

“What do you mean by that? You think I dig ditches? I'm an accountant.”

“Tell me about your friendship with Janice McNeal.”

“What friendship?”

“You know perfectly well.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Ryan leaned forward across the desk. “You forget. I was involved with her myself.” He didn't care to say that neighbors had seen Leimbach entering Janice's house.

“She told you?” asked Leimbach, sitting perfectly still.

“Just tell me about it,” said Ryan.

“She was crazy, completely crazy. I was only with her twice. She hurt me.”

“How did she hurt you?”

“She . . . you know. She left scratches on my penis with her nails. Jesus, was that a mistake. She really told you?”

“I wonder who else she told?” said Ryan, unable to help himself.

Leimbach gripped the edge of the desk. “These things never go away, do they?”

After Ryan left Leimbach, he drove over to Dr. Malloy's office. The nurse led him into a consultation room. At first Ryan was going to sit on the examination table, then he chose a chair. Growing bored after five minutes, he took off his loafers and weighed himself: one hundred and fifty-three pounds. He was still standing on the scale when Dr. Malloy entered.

“I was under the impression that this was a police visit,” said Malloy, looking at Ryan's shoes.

Ryan colored slightly. “I was just passing the time.” He slipped his feet back into his loafers. “I have to ask you a personal question. Were you ever involved with Janice McNeal?”

“Of course not.” Dr. Malloy wore a blue three-piece suit. A stethoscope was tucked in his side pocket. “I mean, she called me several times for no reason I could figure out and once came to the office pretending to have a stomach pain.”

“How do you know she was pretending?”

“I couldn't find anything wrong with her. Let's say that for what she wanted I wasn't the right person.”

“Have you had affairs with other women?”

“That's none of your business.”

It occurred to Ryan that it would have been better to talk to Dr. Malloy in the police station rather than on the doctor's turf. “What about Paul Leimbach or your brother—were they ever involved with Janice?”

“You'd have to ask them.” Dr. Malloy stood with his hand on the doorknob.

“Did Janice specifically say that she wanted to have sex with you?”

“It was more a matter of looks and innuendos which I was able to ignore.”

“When was this?”

“Just before she was killed. Maybe a week or so.”

“Do you ever call yourself a professional man?” Ryan winced to himself as he asked the question.

Dr. Malloy looked at Ryan for a moment, then blinked. “I call myself a doctor,” he said.

Ryan managed to catch up with Donald Malloy just after the pharmacist had come back from one of the patrols. They stood on the sidewalk outside the Friends' storefront. It was midafternoon and the sun was already low. Donald seemed in a hurry and was impatient with Ryan's questions.

“Tell me who she was again?”

Ryan looked into Donald's eyes, which were light blue and very still. “You don't remember?”

“Was she Aaron McNeal's mother, the one who was killed?”

“Did you ever go out with her?”

“Obviously not.”

“Why do you say it like that?”

“Her reputation. I couldn't afford being seen with her. Also I didn't find her attractive.”

“I thought you didn't remember who she was.” Ryan tried to stand so he wasn't looking directly into the photographs of Sharon and Meg.

“It's coming back.” Donald was staring at Ryan as if he thought him an absolute fool. “Don't you realize the only thing I think about now is my niece?”

“Janice came into your pharmacy.”

“Yes, I remember that.”

“What did she buy?”

“I can't recall.”

“Did she buy condoms?”

Donald appeared shocked. “You can't expect me to tell you what a customer bought. I don't think even a court of law could force me to do that.”

The fourth professional man Ryan talked to that day was Harry Martini. Ryan went over to Knox Consolidated just before school let out. Martini denied ever having been involved with Janice. He said he disliked seeing women who lived in Aurelius. “I was tempted,” he said, “but you've got to stay away from your home ground.” Considering the affairs that he admitted to, Ryan believed him. Later he would turn his information about all four men over to Percy.

As Ryan was leaving Martini's office, he saw Sadie taking a coat from her locker. He offered her a ride home and she accepted.

“It would be more exciting to ride in a police car,” she said as she got into Ryan's Ford Escort.

“Maybe next time.”

She talked about school and people she knew.

“How are you getting along with Paula?” asked Ryan.

“She tries too hard.” Sadie wore a red coat and a long gray ski cap with a tassel that hung down her back.

“Maybe you're jealous.”

“So? Why couldn't she have found some other man?”

“They love each other.”

“What about my mother?”

“She's not here anymore,” said Ryan. He had begun to say “dead,” then stopped himself.

“The only good thing about Paula's being in the house is that Aaron can come over without my dad's getting upset.”

“Does he hang around a lot?” said Ryan.

“He doesn't hang around. He visits.”

Ryan parked in front of the house and went in to say hello to Paula. She was in the kitchen and wore an apron over her jeans. Her glasses were steamy from the heat of the dishwasher and she wiped them on her sweatshirt. She had made cookies. When she saw Ryan, she laughed. Sadie had gone to her room.

“It's difficult trying to be nice,” she said. “I thought I was nice already. I haven't made cookies since Aaron was small.”

“So how'd you get off work to go home and bake?” asked Ryan.

“I go in at eight and leave at two. I skip lunch. By the time I get here I'm famished.”

“The happily wedded woman,” said Ryan. He considered saying something about Sadie, then didn't.

“I am happy,” said Paula. “I love Franklin more than I could possibly say.”

W
hen Cookie Evans got to Make Waves around seven-thirty Friday morning, she found the front door ajar. She assumed that Jaime had gotten there before her, though he mostly didn't arrive until eight. Pushing the door open, she saw the mess. That was the first word to come to her, “mess.” The next was “wreckage.” Chairs were overturned, the mirror was broken, a table smashed. Magazines were scattered everywhere. Noticing them, Cookie saw they were spotted with blood. Then she saw blood on the fragments of the mirror. The wallpaper showed a variety of poodles engaged in tonsorial activities: perfuming, combing, trimming, fluffing, beribboning. It, too, was flecked with blood. A display rack of shampoos and conditioners had been tipped over. The room had a sweet smell from the broken bottles of scent. Cookie took this in all at once, then began to look more closely. She said later, “I thought I'd come to the wrong place.” A black Italian loafer with a little tassel lay in the middle of the floor. She recognized it as one of Jaime's shoes.

“Jaime?” she called. There was no answer.

She should have shut the door and called the police but a mixture of indignation and curiosity pushed her forward. Tiny as she was, Cookie had never felt herself in danger from anything. Besides, Louise Talbot had an eight o'clock appointment and Cookie would have to call and change it. The radio was on, a light-rock station from Utica, but there was static and the music faded in and out.

“Jaime?” Cookie called again. She entered the shop, leaving the door open behind her. Sunlight from the doorway slanted in a triangle across the floor, glistening on the spilled shampoo.

Beyond the salon were a stockroom and a smaller, so-called consultation room, which Cookie reserved for clients who wanted privacy. There was also a bathroom. Cookie looked into the stockroom first. It hadn't been touched. The consultation room, however, was wrecked: overturned chairs, broken bottles, the computer smashed on the floor. Cookie noticed her startled face staring up from pieces of the mirror. She went toward the bathroom. It had no windows and the light was out. She flicked the light switch. It was then she found Jaime Rose.

He was bent over the sink with his head wedged against the faucets. He wore nothing but a black T-shirt and a pair of white socks. Three feet of a yellow broom handle protruded from his rectum. The broken-off broom head lay between Jaime's feet, its black bristles pointing upward. A long line of blood curved snakelike down the broom handle onto the floor, where it formed a dark puddle. Jaime's hands were tied behind him with an extension cord and his head was twisted so he faced Cookie. His mouth was gagged with bloody gauze wound around his head. His eyes were rolled up. His T-shirt was torn and Cookie could see cuts and blood on his skin. Two dried streams of blood emerged from his nose and disappeared into his black moustache and beard.

Cookie heard herself make a noise, a low wail with her teeth clenched shut. The telephone was ripped from the wall. She ran out to the street, meaning to call the police from the insurance office next door. Driving down State Street was one of the Friends patrol cars with its orange triangle. Cookie waved to it. “Hey,” she shouted.

The car, a cream-colored Mazda sedan, pulled to the curb and the driver rolled down the window. It was Paul Leimbach. With him were two other men, Russ Fusco and Bud Shiller, a cousin of Ralph and Mike's, who worked for Aurelius Oil driving a truck. Leimbach smiled at Cookie. “Hey, yourself,” he said.

“Someone's killed Jaime. You've got to get the police.”

Leimbach quickly scrambled out of the car, leaving it jammed diagonally against the curb. The others jumped out after him.

“Where is he?”

“He's already dead. He's in the bathroom. Somebody . . .” Cookie couldn't bring herself to describe the broom handle.

“Call the police on the radio,” Leimbach told Shiller. Then he and Russ Fusco ran toward the beauty salon.

“Wait,” said Cookie, “you probably shouldn't go in there.” But by then they were inside.

Cookie ran in after them. The floor of the salon was slippery with spilled shampoo. By the time she reached the bathroom, Fusco was crouched down vomiting on the floor. Leimbach was staring at Jaime.

“The police are on their way,” said Bud Shiller, hurrying across the salon. He looked into the bathroom. “Jesus Christ!”

Captain Percy entered the salon several minutes later with two troopers. More police cars arrived and soon Chuck Hawley began roping off the area with yellow tape. Ryan Tavich was over in Potterville, appearing in court in a case involving half a dozen break-ins, a case that had dragged on for several months.

Percy was furious at Leimbach. “You had no right to go in there! You're not policemen! You're nobodies! God knows how much stuff you destroyed.”

“We thought we could help,” said Leimbach.

“By puking on the evidence?” shouted Percy.

They were outside and a crowd was gathering. Paul Leimbach was held in such esteem because of his work with the Friends that people were shocked by Percy's tone. Chief Schmidt intervened and led Percy away. More police cars arrived. It was one of those fall days that are intermittently sunny and cloudy. A few drops of rain fell.

Chief Schmidt went over to talk to Paul Leimbach. “You really need to be more careful,” he said.

Leimbach couldn't see he had done anything wrong, though Russ Fusco was ashamed he had thrown up and hoped people wouldn't talk about it. Eventually the lab crews arrived. An hour later Jaime's body was removed from the beauty salon on a stretcher. The broom handle was still stuck inside him for the coroner to deal with. With the handle sticking out, yet covered with a red sheet, Jaime seemed about four feet wide.

Peter Marcos, the state police lieutenant, took two men over to Jaime's apartment in the Belvedere complex, near City Hall. It was the same complex where Aaron lived, though a different building. Jaime's apartment was on the first floor. The door was locked and Marcos got the manager to open it. Inside, a large collection of compact discs was strewn around the rug. A plaster replica of Michelangelo's
David
had been knocked to the floor and its head had come off. One of the troopers accidentally stepped on the head, crushing it. Marcos checked the bedroom and kitchen, but only the living room had been disturbed.

Marcos sent his men to talk to neighbors. A woman upstairs, Clara Schloss, who worked the afternoon shift at the rope factory, said she'd had to stamp on the floor around two in the morning because the music was so loud. She called it foreign music. Jaime, or somebody, then turned it down. Several other neighbors said they had heard the music, even people in other buildings. It was salsa, and the same CD had played over and over. Marcos checked the disc player and found a CD by Juan Luis Guerra. Nobody had heard any shouting or other noises, possibly because of the music.

Everyone was talking about Jesse and Shannon Levine and their antagonism toward Jaime. At ten o'clock Percy sent two police cars to pick up the brothers. The cars drove fast, blaring their sirens at intersections. The brothers' apartment was on the second floor and ran the length of the building, meaning they could look out their windows and see the police arriving. Six policemen under Marcos raced up the stairs and hammered on the door. There was no answer. The police kicked the door open. There was food on the table—bowls of cornflakes and freshly poured milk. The back door was open. The police ran down the back stairs and into the yard in time to see Jesse and Shannon climbing over a fence.

For some weeks afterward people living in the area told how the state police had rushed through their backyards. Since the Friends of Sharon Malloy listened to the police calls, in a short time about twenty members of the Friends were also searching for Jesse and Shannon. And because some policemen were in plainclothes and a number of the Friends knew only that they were looking for two young men, there was a certain confusion as to who was who. Dogs barked. A gun was fired, though the police denied it was them. A young trooper was wrestled to the ground by Russ Fusco and Bud Shiller. A few people, seeing strangers running through their backyards, called the police.

Jesse was at last found in a tree house belonging to Bobby Hicks, whose mother taught English at the high school. One of the Friends happened to see a basketball shoe sticking through a hole in the wall of the tree house. Of course, he didn't know it was Jesse's. The Friend, Don Evans, who worked at Aurelius Lumber, climbed up the ladder. When he got to the entrance the person inside kicked him and he fell backward. Don grabbed a branch and hung on but he was still twenty feet off the ground. The tree was an old maple. Three policemen ran into the yard, saw Don hanging from the branch, and assumed he was either Jesse or Shannon. Don was about their age. They ordered him to drop to the ground. Don refused to and told the police that Jesse (or perhaps Shannon) was in the tree house. The police didn't believe him. Don managed to swing his legs up so that he hung from the branch somewhat like a sloth. He yelled at the police and they yelled at him. His change and keys and pocket comb fell from his pockets, pelting the police. More people ran into the yard, including some Friends, and Don was identified. Several of the Friends hurried off to get a ladder.

Jesse was still in the tree house out of sight. The police shouted to him but he didn't answer. Four troopers climbed the ladder—actually two-by-fours nailed to the tree. When the trooper in the lead got to the top, Jesse kicked him in the head. Luckily, he held on, but he slipped and the trooper behind him nearly fell. There followed a standoff as the police shouted commands to Jesse—still unidentified—and he refused to respond. More policemen entered the yard, as well as other Friends, people who lived nearby, and Franklin. A cold frame was broken and a black dog was running around.

Marcos arrived to take charge and ordered his men to rush the tree house. Eight men climbed the ladder. The first two were knocked off by Jesse, though only one fell all the way to the ground. A third trooper was accidentally knocked off by one of his fellows. Once the police had managed to get up the ladder and were wrestling with Jesse, it became obvious that the tree house could not support the weight of so many men. It began to break apart. Franklin, who had his camera, took several pictures of state troopers clinging to branches, though he was prevailed upon not to use them in the paper. Boards from the tree house fell to the ground and there was a lot of shouting and cries to watch out.

Jesse had scrambled onto a branch. By this time the fire department had arrived with ladders, which they carried across the yards. The ladders were put up against the tree and the troopers marooned on branches were rescued. Jesse then climbed to the top of the tree and shouted insults at the police. “Capitalist running dog” was one. His blond goatee waggled. A trooper followed him and managed to hook a handcuff around Jesse's ankle. Jesse was then offered the choice of climbing down or being yanked out of the tree. He climbed down, assisted (none too gently) by several troopers. He was then bundled into a police car and taken to City Hall.

When Ryan returned to Aurelius from Potterville at one o'clock, Jesse was in jail, though he refused to talk. Shannon hadn't been found yet. The preliminary report from the coroner said that Jaime Rose had been strangled and stabbed. The broom handle had been pushed up through his rectum after he was already dead. Police talked to dozens of people but no one had seen Jaime either taken from his apartment or going into Make Waves. He had left work at six and gone to the Aurelius Grill, where he had had dinner by himself. That's all anyone knew.

It took Ryan an hour to get the details sorted out. He talked to Cookie and then to Franklin. He looked at Jesse sitting gloomily in the holding cell. He thought of how Jesse—or had it been Shannon?—had dumped the bowl of tomato soup in Jaime's lap at the Aurelius Grill.

For the remainder of the afternoon, Ryan helped direct the search for Shannon. Roadblocks were set up as far away as the turnpike. Jesse and Shannon's apartment was searched for clues that might link the brothers to Jaime's murder or to the missing girls. By four o'clock it was dark. Police dogs were brought from Utica, but so many people were trying to help search for Shannon that the dogs got overexcited and weren't much use. The Friends were elated to be doing something constructive. I don't know to what degree people thought Shannon might be to blame for the missing girls but there seemed no doubt in their minds that the brothers had killed Jaime. There was, however, no proof, except that the brothers had been plaguing Jaime for several weeks. What existed was a great desire that Jesse and Shannon be guilty.

At seven o'clock Ryan went home, parking in his driveway. His house was dark. He had eaten nothing since morning and he was famished. He unlocked his front door, turned on the hall light, went down the hall to the kitchen, and stopped. A loaf of bread was on the counter. The mayonnaise was open. A small pile of sliced ham was on a plate along with a hunk of cheese. The ham had a slightly sour smell. Then he noticed that the window in the back door was broken.

Ryan heard a voice behind him and he spun around.

“I'm sorry I broke the window. I'll pay for it. And I'll pay for the food too. I was starving.”

It was Shannon. He was sitting in the half dark on the living room couch, where he had been sleeping. In his lap was Ryan's cat, who was purring loudly.

“What're you doing here?” asked Ryan. He thought how Chief rarely purred when he held him.

“I'm turning myself in.”

“For what?”

“Beats me. For what all those cops were chasing us for.”

Ryan turned on the lamp. Shannon wore jeans and a gray sweatshirt. There was mud on his clothes and mud on the couch. His muddy sneakers were on the floor.