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

“No!”

“Didn’t you say you would beat her with your belt buckle if she missed the bus again?”

“Well, yeah,” he granted. “But that’s just discipline. Didn’t your father ever beat you for not minding him? He should have.”

I ignored his question and opinion. We were talking about him, not me. And now I braced for the big one: “Have you ever kissed Darleen on the lips?” I asked.

I was lucky that Irene Metzger got to me before her husband did. She pushed me to the door, holding Dick Metzger off with a straight arm as she screamed like a harridan. She managed to run interference long enough for me to get out in one piece.

“Don’t ever show your face around here again!” he yelled after me, and he meant it. But angry or not, he still managed to steal a long, healthy look at my “pretty little behind” as I hurried to my car.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1961

At seven thirty the next morning, I was parked on Division Street, opposite the junior high school. A growing stream of kids arrived on foot as the time for the first bell approached. The students milled about on the sidewalk, enjoying the warm weather, chatting and laughing as they awaited the start of another dreary school day. In the alley next to the cigar store, a dozen or so toughs leaned against the brick wall, smoking cigarettes. They were all of fifteen. Then the buses chugged into the parking lot and disgorged their loads. I wasn’t looking for children this day. I was waiting for bus number 63 and the man who drove it.

Gus Arnold was not happy when he saw me climb the stairs into the bus. He’d probably wanted to steal a nap or a drink somewhere, and I was a stone in his shoe.

“You?” he asked, positively shaking at the sight of me. “What do you want now?”

“I want to know what you did after you dropped off Carol Liswenski the day Darleen Hicks disappeared.”

His large, gray face, jowled and unshaven, froze in place. He didn’t know what to say. I helped him out.

“Darleen Hicks’s lunch box was found in a snowbank yesterday afternoon,” I said. “Right where you turn the bus around on County Highway Fifty-Eight. The sheriff must have missed you by minutes there yesterday, just after you finished your run around four thirty.”

He ran his tongue over his lips. “That’s right,” he said. “Four thirty like always. I drove straight back to the depot.”

“But not so on December twenty-first. You made an extra stop that day, didn’t you?”

“I already told you. I had a flat tire.”

“That’s what you told the dispatcher, but not what you told the sheriff.”

“What, are you keeping score? Why can’t you leave me alone?”

“Let’s make a deal,” I said. “You show me where you took your nap that day, and I won’t tell your dispatcher you punctured the spare to cover for yourself.”

He was trapped. He wiped his brow and then his whole face with a yellowed handkerchief.

“I can’t drive out there now,” he whined. “They keep track of the gas and miles.”

“My car’s just over there,” I said. I had him.

Gus Arnold was no conversationalist. He sat slumped against the passenger door, staring at the mileposts whizzing by. With the bench seat set so far forward, his long legs were bent and touching the dashboard.

We passed the turnoff for County Highway 58, and my passenger grumbled directions. “Take the next right,” he said. “Slow down or you’ll miss it.”

It was a narrow, unpaved track that ducked into the woods, almost invisible if you were driving too fast or not looking out for it. I turned off Route 5 and crunched over the gravel path. Gus Arnold told me to continue straight for about a quarter mile. Then the road came to an end in a large clearing, about fifty yards wide, amid the same high pines that bordered County Highway 58 on the other side of the mountains of snow. I rolled to a stop and pulled the brake.

“You wanted to see it. This is it,” said Gus Arnold.

I popped open my door and stepped out. The snow hills rose before me. I calculated in my head without success just how far we were from the spot where Darleen’s lunch box had been found on the other side of the snow.

“So you parked here and took a nap?” I asked.

“No,” he said, climbing out of the car after me. “Over there, behind that row of trees.”

I looked to where he was pointing, about forty yards away, and couldn’t see it. It just looked like woods.

“Go take a look,” he said. “There’s a narrow opening between those trees and the rest of the forest. I park there because no one can see me. It’s quiet.”

I investigated his claim, and discovered he was indeed telling the truth. The small gap between the line of trees and the woods was just large enough to back a bus into, and it would be quite invisible to anyone at the other end of the clearing.

I returned to my car and approached the snow hills, gazing at the melting mountains, looking for evidence of something out of the ordinary. Through the tall pines, I could hear the roar and rumble of trucks in the distance. They were clearing snow on the other side.

“It must have been dark that day,” I said to Gus Arnold. “Did you leave the bus?”

“I just put my feet up and took a snooze. A half hour later, I drove back to the depot.”

“You didn’t open the door?” I asked.

“What are you driving at?”

I strode over to the edge of the woods and picked up an empty pint bottle from the slush. It was Old Crow, the label slipping off from several days of soaking in the wet.

“I thought you said you parked over there,” I said, indicating the line of trees opposite.

“That’s not mine,” he stammered. “You can’t prove it’s