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

“I’m not the police,” I said. “I don’t care if you were drinking on the job, although the parents of your passengers might have something to say about that. But we’re about a hundred yards from where Darleen Hicks’s lunch box was found. Now, do you want to tell me the truth or would you rather I have a talk with your dispatcher about the flat tire?”

He thought about it, probably wondering if I might really rat him out. In the end, he chose to play it safe and admitted the bottle was his.

“If I were to dig around here, would I find more empties?”

He hung his head and grunted yes.

I gazed up at the snow hills again, gauging their height. The tallest peaks were easily fifteen or twenty feet high. Could a sixty-year-old drunk scale the hills carrying a girl over his shoulder? I doubted it, but Gus Arnold was a large man. And what about the lunch box? It seemed possible that he could have lost track of it while scrambling over slippery snow.

“Did you climb through the hills that day?” I asked, just to cover my bases.

“Are you crazy? Of course not. I don’t have any reason to climb over the hills.”

He sounded sincere, but how could I be sure?

I looked back to where I’d found the empty bottle, and I realized I hadn’t considered the woods properly. They bordered the hills, with the snow piled right up against the trees. I made my way over to the nearest thicket and waded in a few feet. One could easily weave through the woods and reach the other side, I figured. Sure, the path was tight with sharp, brittle branches to navigate, but it seemed possible. Certainly easier than carrying a body over the snow hills.

“And you didn’t go through the woods either?”

“No. I sat in the bus drinking till the bottle was gone. I was here twenty or thirty minutes. Why do you got to ask me such things?”

“It’s not an accusation,” I said.

“I didn’t kill that little girl,” he said. “I swear I didn’t.”

“And you didn’t see anyone else here that day? Another car, perhaps?”

He shook his head firmly. “I didn’t see no one.”

“What can I do for you today, Miss Stone?” asked Arnold Dienst, leaning toward me at his large, oak desk. Some Stravinsky pulsed at a low but distinct volume from a hi-fi in a wooden cabinet behind him. I recognized the “Concerto in D for Strings”; my father was an admirer of Stravinsky’s, and I knew this piece well, having heard it countless times since it was first recorded in the late forties. The first movement sounded like the score to a suspense film.

“Do you like Stravinsky, Dr. Dienst?” I asked.

He mugged an expression of mild satisfaction. “I think the better question is how is it that you know Stravinsky?”

I blushed, now wishing I hadn’t mentioned it. Yes, I had been showing off a little. “Never mind. I meant to ask if you found this music conducive to your work here. It’s not always soothing.”

“I find modern music stimulating and inspirational. That creates a peaceful satisfaction in my mind, no matter how frenetic or dissonant the music. I conduct therapy sessions with the boys once a week, always with music playing. Everything from Webern to Schoenberg, Janacek, Hindemith, Ravel. And if I want to pander to the boys’ tastes, I play something they’ll like. Copland, for instance.”

“Really? They go for Copland?”

He pondered my question for a moment, possibly reconsidering his choice of words. Perhaps “like” was an exaggeration.

“Yes,” he granted reluctantly, “the boys would probably rather listen to their rock-around-the-clock music.”

Dr. Dienst noticed my grin despite my best efforts to swallow it. He smiled awkwardly, covering his large teeth with his stretched lips, but his eyes betrayed a vague awareness that he’d said something wrong.

“Do the boys like the modern music you play?” I asked, wanting to put him back at his ease. I was certain I knew the answer.

“They hate it, of course,” he said with a good-natured smile that parted his lips and showed the long teeth he’d been trying to hide moments before. “But the music provokes strong emotional responses in them without the accompanying physical violence. I believe that to be a salubrious exercise.”

“What about Joey Figlio? How does he react to Stravinsky?”

Dienst sat back in his chair and rocked, aiming his penetrating stare at me, trying to understand what made me tick. His wasn’t a lecherous gaze but a curious one.

“Joey Figlio sticks his fingers into his ears,” he said. “And when he’s feeling particularly industrious, he plugs his ears with wads of paper.”

He watched me a while longer, as the energetic first movement ended and gave way to the lighter second.

“Why are you here, Miss Stone?”

“I’m investigating the disappearance of Darleen Hicks,” I said.

“Yes, I get that. But you’re talking to me about Stravinsky and beating around the bush. I know you’re not in love with Joey Figlio, as he claimed in court. So what exactly do you want, Miss Stone?”

Dienst was a smart man. He’d seen through my circling and stalling, the conversational chairs I’d upended as diversions to trip and delay him while I worked my way around to asking the real questions. A cheap tactic on my part, to be sure, and not particularly clever. Sometimes outright flirting worked better. But with a man like Arnold Dienst, my charms—such as they were—and trickery proved equally ineffective.

“What I really want is to search Joey Figlio’s belongings,” I said finally. “I think he may have messages or notes from Darleen Hicks in his possession. They may provide clues as to what happened.”

“This may be a reformatory, Miss Stone,” he said with a gentle smile, “but we try to respect the privacy of our boys to the extent possible. Now, if you were to obtain a warrant from a court of law, we would, of course, comply. But I cannot let you root through Joey