The Judgment (38 page)

Were my tactics with Dominic and the polygraph test underhanded? No, but they were questionable, and I’d be happy to argue the ethics of that question with anyone on the basis of the polygraph’s inherent inaccuracy and the manner in which Mark Evola had twisted Dominic’s arm to get him to agree to take the test in the first place. I felt I was justified. But Evola had no better idea of the law than most cops. He didn’t care what he did as long as he got a conviction.

Something occurred to me, a memory from a couple of weeks ago. It was Sue at Dominic’s retirement party at the Glisten Inn. She had ranted at him, furious that a stripper had appeared, personally insulted and offended on behalf of Peg Benda and all the other women there. Then the next morning, she was embarrassed that she’d passed out in front of the guys. Could she have remembered this, too? Could she have set out, unconsciously, to pay him back? I had to admit there was a possibility. With her, everything seemed to be personal.

But then again, maybe it was getting personal with me, too. I was so furious about that smart-ass Evola’s threat to take away Dominic’s pension if he didn’t submit to the polygraph test, I hadn’t even really thought of Dominic Benda as a real suspect.

If I went by Mark Conroy’s theory, Dominic could very well be under suspicion. Conroy had said to look at people
children trust. Like cops. Dominic knew everyone and everyone knew him, including all the kids. He’d been on the force so long, he was almost like a fixture. People loved Dominic, which was why it was hard to think of him as a possible murderer. But you never know, do you? Maybe Dominic was getting freaked out about having to retire after thirty-five years. Maybe he was unstable.

But I remembered how upset he was and how-he cried at the Glisten Inn over the death of little Catherine Quigley. He was very drunk, but his tears seemed genuine. Maybe he’d been drinking too much in general and was suffering from blackouts. There’ve been thousands of killers who say they don’t remember doing it.

Hell, maybe I was unraveling myself. These murders, and the fact that they continued to be unsolved, were driving people nuts.

One thing was clear, though. I’d better call Peg Benda and tell her I’d be out to talk with Dominic around three o’clock in the afternoon. That would give him a nap of four or five hours. If they were still treating him as a suspect, then I’d better hear his story, if he even had one. Besides, I had his topcoat in the back of my car.

I left Dominic’s tract house after about an hour with him, not having learned all that much, yet feeling a lot better about what, if anything, lay ahead. We had talked over coffee at his kitchen table as Peg moved quietly about attending to things there. She poured the coffee. We did the talking. Dominic was sleepy but coherent.

I had to tell him they were still treating him as a suspect. Sue had said she’d be digging into the radio logs next. Did he have anything to fear there? Dominic wanted to know what I meant by that. Was he in regular contact with the dispatcher? On the other hand, maybe there was something that might help him. Maybe he’d been sent out on some special call on those late afternoons when Lee Higgins
and Catherine Quigley had been killed, something that would have established him at a specific place for a considerable period of time.

Dominic gave that a moment’s thought and shrugged. “They were just days like any other days,” he said. “Nothing special about them.”

Then I brought up the subject of his patrol car, and he interrupted me.

“Wait a minute. Maybe there
was
something the day the little girl was killed. That was the day before my retirement, the day before the party. I was rolling someplace, and I got a call on a rowdy drunk at the Dew Drop Inn on Beulah Road. That’s outside Hub City, so it’s county jurisdiction. I got the call around four, and it took me five, maybe ten minutes to get there. I remember it was starting to get dark.

“Anyways, I was all alone. We’d been singles in patrol cars since 1981 when they had the first big cutback. And I remember thinkin’, I sure hope this doesn’t give me any trouble—you know, the day before retirement—because if they called for a cop, it meant the bartender couldn’t handle the guy alone. You never know what you’re in for in a situation like that, see. The guy’s drunk, he’s out of control, maybe he’s armed, got a gun or a knife, you don’t know. I just remember I didn’t like it, going into that place.”

“So what happened?”

“Nothing much. The bartender pointed him out when I come in. He was a little bigger than they was used to. He’d taken a poke at some guy sitting next to him because he didn’t like what he said, but I just walked over and talked to him, talked him into coming to the station with me. But believe me, I had my hand on the butt of my pistol the whole time. Mostly I just talk to them, see, and they come along. He came. I patted him down, put the cuffs on him, and put him in the backseat of the patrol car. I remember driving through the snow back to Pickeral Point and him tellin’ me his whole sad story about how his girlfriend
walked out on him and went to Texas. They booked him for D and D. You could look it up. I think he spent the night in jail. But I do remember it was a short day for me. When I finished the paperwork on him, it was almost five. Makarides said just turn in the car, no point in going out again. See, my usual route back to town was down Clarion Road. Who knows? Maybe I’d’ve seen the guy planting the little girl’s body if I’d come in at my regular time.”

“Do you remember the name of the guy you brought in?”

He thought about it. “No, but Makarides can look it up for you.”

Then back to the matter of the patrol car. I told Dominic what Sue had said, that it wasn’t to be cleaned, washed, or painted until they’d had a chance to go over it. Otherwise, she’d consider it an admission of guilt.

Dominic looked across thé kitchen at Peg.

“Too late,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I washed out the inside. I had to. It smelled of vomit.”

“The guy I took for D and D, the one I told you about,” Dominic said, “he barfed in the back. I wiped it up, but there was still lots of stink.”

“When he brought the car home, it still stank,” said Peg. “I told him, ‘Dominic, I ain’t ridin’ in that thing until it smells right.’ So I really went after it. Did a good job.”

Sue and Mark Evola would have to live with that. “That should be easy to verify,” I said.

Dominic laughed. “You bet! Phil Kizer had to drive it on the next watch, and he was really pissed off about it.”

Finally, I asked about Billy Bartkowski. How long had they known the family? How well did Dominic know Billy?

He shook his head and looked away. “I don’t even like to talk about it,” he said. “The Bartkowskis moved in … how long ago, Peg?”

“Seven, eight years ago. Joanie was pregnant with Billy. Remember?”

“Yeah, so we knew the kid his whole life long. Pretty short life. He was like our first grandkid. We got three of our own now, but he was just like one of ours. Peg babysat Billy and the other Bartkowski kids. Billy was always around.”

“You said you gave him a ride in the patrol car a couple of times.”

“Yeah, that was last summer. See, sometimes I sneak home and have lunch here. Billy was always after me to get inside the patrol car, so a couple of times I took him into town and bought him an ice cream, and I brought him right back.”

I was satisfied. “Anything else you want to add, Dominic? Peg?”

There was nothing. So I got up from the kitchen table, thanked them both, and headed for the front door.

“Now, Dominic,” I cautioned him there, “you let me know the minute you hear from Sue Gillis, or Evola, or Olesky, or anyone. If they come by to bring you in for questioning, call me before you leave here, and I’ll be there at the station waiting for you. Got it?”

I backed out of the driveway and drove slowly by the Bartkowski home, checking the address, noting how empty and deserted it looked. But not nearly as empty as it must seem inside. Once past, I sped up and headed on my way. I took the turn into Hub City.

Maybe it was because of that telephone conversation I’d had with Sue, or perhaps I had been brooding subconsciously on the matter ever since Sunday evening. Whatever it was that had impelled me, I had given Father Charles Albertus a call before I left to talk to Dominic. I told him I would be in the neighborhood late in the afternoon and might drop by. He seemed eager to see me. He
told me I’d better be wearing my debater’s cap.

In any case, I was ready for him, contentious and argumentative, looking for a fight. I drove past Our Lady of Sorrows, then turned the corner and parked in front of the rectory, behind his station wagon. Walking briskly to the door, I gave the bell three hard, impatient rings.

Only moments later Father Chuck appeared. He was dressed in a cassock and wore his Roman collar. Maybe he thought he looked more priestly in that outfit, and actually, he did.

“Ah, Charley,” he said, “Tm so happy to see you, glad you accepted my invitation. Or was it I who accepted yours? Not that it matters.”

He let forth a jovial laugh and stuck out his hand to me. But as he gave mine a shake, his eyes shifted to some point behind me, and an expression of concern touched his face.

“Excuse me a moment,” he said and brushed past me, leaving the door to the rectory open.

I turned and looked after him. A boy was running as fast as he could for the rectory and Father Chuck. He seemed to have come from the woods behind the church and the parking lot. You could tell the kid was upset. He wasn’t crying, but his face was all puckered from the effort to keep from it. The priest went out to meet him. Curious, after a moment’s hesitation, I followed. I got there as the boy was blurting out his story to Father Chuck, who had gone down on one knee to listen.

“… and he looked real mean, Father. I was a-scared of him, I really was.”

“Did he try to grab you, Tommy? Try to get you to stay or anything?”

“N-No, it was just the way he jumped out of that ol’ shack and yelled at me to get outa there—real mean.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Just cutting through on my way home from school. You said it was okay, remember?”

The priest nodded. “So I did. But I’ll tell you what. You
go on home, and you can tell Mommy and Daddy about it, and say that Father Chuck’s going to take care of things. But you better check with me before you cut through the woods again. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Father.”

With a quick hug, the priest sent the boy on his way. He rose and said apologetically, “Look, Charley, I think I’d better take care of this. Would you mind waiting around for a bit? It shouldn’t take long.”

“I’ll go with you,” I said, thinking he could use some backup.

He thought about that a moment and nodded. “All right. I’ll just duck back into the rectory for a moment.”

When he reemerged he had a shotgun tucked under his arm. I must have looked a bit surprised at that.

“It’s hard to get people to take a man in skirts seriously,” he said as he touched the cassock at about thigh level. “But don’t worry, it isn’t loaded.”

Together we set off down the path that led to the trees and through the woods. As we went along he explained again that the property belonged to the church. There were a couple of acres of undeveloped woodland, quite empty except for a caretaker’s cabin that had fallen deep into disrepair.

“Nobody lives there now,” he said.

“At least not the last time you looked.”

He gave me a rather solemn smile and nodded at that.

The boy, Tommy, had called the place a “shack.” That about said it. It leaned a little to the left, and there was a hole or two in the roof, but the windows, remarkably, remained unbroken. The door of the place stood open. We approached it quietly and carefully. There was someone inside moving about.

Father Chuck put a finger to his lips and stepped in front of me, and then to one side of the door of the shack. There at last he stopped, listened, and waited. I kept back.

“All right,” said the priest, his voice ringing with authority, “I think you’d better come out of there now.”

“Gimme a minute,” someone answered. “I’m almost packed up. I’ll be out of here before you know it.”

We gave him a minute, or two or three. But in decidedly less than five he was finished inside and through the door. A small, wiry man, he looked at us right and left and pulled down his wool cap to cover his ears. He was dressed in wafflestompers, jeans, and a good warm winter jacket that covered his hips. He hauled after him a big pack, complete with sleeping bag. Once he was outside the shack, he took a firm position against the shack, put a pipe in his mouth, and took the time to light it up.

“Give me a minute with this,” he said.

He had a tough little face, bearded and shaggy. His eyes were blue and a bit fierce.

“I s’pose it was that kid I yelled at told you I was out here,” he said. He pulled deep on the pipe and let go a great cloud of smoke.

“You frightened him,” said Father Chuck.

“He shouldn’t’ve come nosin’ around. I had the door open, but he had no right comin’ in on me the way he did. Even somebody in my situation’s got rights, you know.”

“You’re homeless, I take it.”

“No, I ain’t homeless. You mean, sort of a victim, right? I ain’t beggin’. I’m a tramp, a vagabond. I live this way because I like to live rough.”

“Even in the winter?” I asked.

“In the winter it’s harder, but I get by. I coulda made a nice little home of this place, take me through to spring, if that kid hadn’t…”

“Well, you can’t, and that’s that,” said Father Chuck.

“I ain’t arguin’. You don’t need that shotgun. I’ll be on my way now.”

Father Chuck eyed him uneasily, and said with a frown, “Where will you go? There’s snow on the ground. You can’t just curl up under a tree.”

Then he hiked up the skirt of his cassock and dug into his pants pocket. He pulled out a few bills, peeled off a five, and offered it to the man.

“I usually do work for pay.”

“I feel like I owe you something,” said Father Chuck, “since I’m turning you out of your cabin.”