Stone Cold Dead by James Ziskin (great novels of all time txt) 📕

but subdued by a conscious sobriety, bordering on stoicism, in the face of her daughter’s demise. She was of simple and rugged stock, and her hard life had only taught her to be tougher; weeping was not a luxury she could permit herself.

“Do you think she’s in those hills?” she asked softly.

“It’s possible,” I said. “Likely. What with the lunch box having been found there.”

“And we just have to wait?” bellowed Dick Metzger, quite unexpectedly, as if the failure to find Darleen were my fault. “What are we supposed to do in the meantime?”

“Since you ask,” I said, “it might help if you answered a few questions about Darleen for me.”

Irene Metzger expressed alarm. Her eyes darted to her husband, whose glare, aimed at me, suggested extreme animus.

“What do you want to ask me?” he more or less threatened.

“Well, for starters,” I said, retreating even farther into my seat, “where were you that day around five o’clock?”

His eyes opened wide, looking like two tiny blue marbles in a sea of white, and his face constricted, twisted, and flushed red. Almost purple. I thought his scalp was going to blow off his head. His wife jumped to her feet and grabbed his arm.

“You want to know where I was?” he hissed at me, incredulous.

“Yes,” I said, shrinking ever smaller. “If you don’t mind.”

“Hell, yes, I mind!” he roared, blasting a spume of saliva off his lips in my direction with his last word.

“I already told you that Dick doesn’t know anything about this,” said Irene Metzger, pushing herself between her rabid husband and me. “Now why did you have to go and ask him like that?”

I gaped at the two of them. Considering the circumstances, I thought my question was a natural one. Someone should ask him where he’d been, if only to find out if he’d seen or heard anything.

“If you are truly interested in finding out what happened to your daughter,” I said, “you should be eager to answer my questions. I’m trying to help, so I need to know who was where, what they did, and what they saw.” I turned to Dick Metzger, who was staring daggers at me. “Darleen was seen on Route Five-S around four. How did her lunch box wind up at the end of this road? She would have had to pass this very house to reach the snow hills. Were you here at the farm? Did you see or hear anyone drive past? Walk past?”

He just stood there glaring at me, huffing, but I could see the red starting to drain from his temples. He was struggling to maintain his indignation in the face of my logic.

“At the very least, you should want to help me,” I continued. “But instead, you’ve been avoiding me and stonewalling as if you have something to hide. Do you have something to hide, Mr. Metzger?”

He turned away and stalked to the window and back. I couldn’t be sure if he was about to strike me or confess to Darleen’s murder. He ran his hand through his oily hair again then stared me down.

“Get your pretty little behind off my sofa and out of my house,” he said in an eerily soft voice. He sneered, revealing his long teeth, stained brown from chewing tobacco and coffee. My knees were shaking.

His wife grabbed him from behind and yanked him off to the side, where she scolded him in an excited whisper. He tried to pull away, ranting that he wanted me gone, but she wouldn’t let go of his arm.

“No one else will help us, no one else cares,” she hissed through her teeth. “Don’t chase off our only hope of finding out what happened to our Darleen.”

I wanted to leave, but I didn’t dare move with the beast blocking my path to the door. He seethed, pouted like a child, but finally quieted down after a long minute. Once his respiration had returned to normal, his wife released his arm from her grip, but not her eyes from his. I could see the silent communication, built on years of living together, passing from one to the other, as she willed him to calm down. He turned and approached me slowly, his hard, cold glare fixed on me. He stopped a few feet away from the sofa, towering over me.

“I did not harm that girl,” he said determinedly, slowly, punctuating each word with a jab of his finger. “I have nothing to hide.”

I stared up at him, willing myself to appear strong, to show no weakness. He was so close that he could have reached out and wrung my neck without taking a step closer.

“If that’s so,” I said softly, “you won’t mind answering my questions.”

He clearly hadn’t expected that, but he didn’t lay a hand on me. He drew a deep sigh instead and shook his head.

“So go ahead and ask me,” he said.

“Where were you that day around five o’clock?”

He nearly blew up again but contained his anger. Had he really expected me not to repeat my question?

“I can’t remember exactly,” he said. “I was out in the field or in the barn somewhere.”

“Did you hear any cars or see anyone on the road?”

“No.”

“Were you near the Karl’s property line, by any chance? Did you see Bobby Jr.?”

“No. I don’t remember when I seen him last, but it wasn’t that day.” He paused to think. “Besides, it was dark by then. I wouldn’t have seen nothing.”

I weighed my words carefully, debating whether to ask or not. In the end, I had to. I had to put the question to him.

“Can you describe your relationship with your daughter?”

He looked confused. “My . . . relationship? I’m her father.”

“I mean, do you get along with Darleen. Are you affectionate? Stern? Indulgent?”

“I’m her father,” he said. “I don’t know how else to tell you.”

“Are you a doting father? Is Darleen Daddy’s little girl?”

He gaped at me. “What?”

If he was too dim to answer delicate questions, I’d have to be blunt: “Did