A Stone's Throw by James Ziskin (best story books to read .txt) 📗

blue eyes shot red and tired. He blinked. “He’s capable of it, I suppose. But I’ve never known him to be a killer.”

“Tell me something, Jimmy. What is it about Micheline that’s hitting you so hard?”

He nudged his glass an inch to the left, then back to the right. “She was a good kid. I hate to see this happen.”

“Anything else?”

“What do you want me to say? That I blame myself?”

“Do you?”

“I don’t think all fancy about things the way you do. Bad stuff happens sometimes. Even to nice kids like Miche.”

“Then you’re in the clear, Jimmy.”

He fixed me with a hard stare. I wondered if I’d pushed him too far. “Yeah, I blame myself,” he said at length. “Maybe I’m going soft, but I wish I’d a never sent her out with that Johnny Dornan. And I want to get the guy who did this to her. I want that so bad. So I guess even I’ve started thinking all fancy now, because I feel I gotta do something to avenge her. To win back some of my own self-respect or I don’t know how I’ll live with myself.”

“What do you want to do, Jimmy?”

“I want to strangle the son of a bitch with my bare hands. I want to crush his windpipe with my thumbs and squeeze so hard his eyes pop out of their sockets.”

I recoiled in my seat. The violence of his words swelled as his face grew redder. But he wasn’t finished. “I want to choke the life out of him and kick him in the head about fifty times when I’m done. Till he’s a goddamn bloody mess. I want him to take back the guilt I got burning in my chest since Miche disappeared. And then, when I’m all out of breath from kicking his head off his shoulders, then—just for poetical justice—I’m gonna set him on fire and watch the bastard burn to a crisp, black piece of shit.”

Jimmy poured his drink down his gullet and grabbed the bottle standing between us on the table, startling me with the speed and wrath of his action. He sloshed more Scotch into his glass and swallowed it straightaway. Then he slouched in his chair, breathing hard and staring at nothing in particular. His fury cooled over time. I didn’t dare say a word.

“You’re going to find him for me,” he said. “And I’m going to kill him.”

Whereas I hadn’t feared him earlier, I was now frozen in place, sure he’d strangle me, just for practice, if I said the wrong thing. But as the minutes passed, I realized he was thinking. Planning, perhaps. Then he finally spoke. Squinting as if trying to recall some distant memory, he asked me if I’d said I was going to speak to Bruce Robertson later that day.

“At ten,” I answered in a rough voice. I cleared my throat and repeated yes.

“Ask him about Mack Hodges,” he said. “And Ledoux. Dan Ledoux.”

“I’ve heard of them. What do they have to do with all this?”

He shrugged at me. “I don’t know exactly. But they were right in the middle of the shenanigans nine years ago at Hagerstown. This whole thing goes back to Johnny Dornan throwing that race. And Bruce Robertson knows what happened.”

“Do you know where I might find this Mack Hodges? Is he still in Maryland somewhere?”

“Yeah. Not far from Pimlico. Six feet under.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

SUNDAY, AUGUST 19, 1962

Eight a.m. sharp. I commandeered the last stale piece of Danish, which, I was sure, had been left out the day before. Or maybe Friday. Still, I was feeling hollow and needed to get something inside me. Seated at the long table in the doctors’ lounge, sipping cold coffee and puffing on a stale cigarette, I scratched out the beginnings of a story on the thrown race at Hagerstown nine years earlier. It was mostly notes to myself, reminders to research this and that. Too many holes—dates, horses, accomplices—but it helped organize my thoughts. Then Fred Peruso burst through the door, cigar fuming between his teeth, trailing a swirling cloud of blue smoke.

“Eleonora,” he said to tease me.

“Federico,” I answered in kind, stubbing out my cigarette in the aluminum ashtray. “So what’s the verdict?”

“Broken neck. Dead before the car was abandoned.”

“And can you confirm it’s Micheline Charbonneau?”

“You’ll have to ask Frank. He’s on his way down here now.”

“Estimated time of death?”

“Impossible to fix it exactly. But like I said last night, it’s been at least a week.”

Fred and I went over the condition of the body, height and weight, and details of the injury to her neck. I took notes for my story, which I would review with Charlie Reese and deliver to the typesetter before 10:00 p.m.

About fifteen minutes later, the big sheriff sauntered in, turned a chair around backward, and took a seat.

He greeted Fred then nodded to me. “Ellie, I see you’ve turned back into Cinderella.”

I smiled. “What about you? Get any sleep?”

He shook his head. “No, but I just got off the horn with Schenectady police. I had a hunch maybe Micheline was arrested once or twice. They confirmed she got picked up a year and a half ago for shoplifting at Breslaw’s on State Street. I’m driving over there in a few minutes. We got one decent print off the body and hope to match it to the ones they have in their files.”

I wrote down the information. “Can I call you later today for the results?”

“I should know one way or the other within two hours.”

“Anything in the car you can tell me about?”

“Besides the awful smell? Registered to Vivian Coleman like we expected.”

“Good morning, Ellie,” said Henry Pryor.

So we’d moved on to first names? That was fine with me. I liked to cultivate friendly relations with law enforcement. Till now, the Saratoga sheriff had been standoffish at best, so I was sure I could turn the warming trend to my advantage.

“You’re looking chipper today,