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

That’s the answer I’d expected and why, frankly, I had been beating around the bush. But I hoped Dienst still might provide some kernel of information for me.

“Joey Figlio had a handwritten note, addressed to Darleen from a man named Ted. He was hiding it somewhere here at Fulton, and he gave it to Frankie Ralston to give to me.”

Dienst swiveled toward the window and looked off into the distance as the third movement began, buzzing like wasps. He rocked in his chair.

“The last time you were here, Miss Stone, you asked me to search Joey Figlio’s belongings as well.” I said nothing. It wasn’t a question. “When he left the facility without permission and stole your car, I felt it was justified under the circumstances.”

“You felt what was justified?” I asked.

He swung his chair around, folded his hands on the desk before him, and looked me in the eye. “I searched his room and locker,” he said. “While he was missing and then again when I brought him back here after the hearing. I needed to be sure he wasn’t bringing contraband into the school.”

“Contraband?” I asked.

“Cigarettes, alcohol, chewing gum, soda pop, weapons. I believe that in order to cure the juvenile delinquent, we must nourish the body and mind. A boy must be provided a nutritious diet, or he will make no progress toward rehabilitation and, in fact, will recidivate. That means no candy or smoking or fizzy soft drinks here. We only allow drinks such as wheatgrass, carrot, and orange juice. Milk, of course, though I’m trying to replace it with yogurt. And distilled water. No chlorination permitted in our diet here. And I believe margarine is superior to butter in every way.”

“Not taste,” I said.

“No, not taste,” he granted with a disapproving look. “I met the violinist Yehudi Menuhin in Switzerland three years ago, and he impressed upon me the benefits of the vegetarian lifestyle and yoga. No meat has passed my lips since that month in Gstaad. Of course, the board of directors here insists that we provide meat to the boys, but I have faith that one day I’ll win them over, once the research proves the benefits of a meatless diet.”

“And the yoga?” I asked.

“I haven’t been able to find a yogi anywhere north of Greenwich Village, I’m afraid. But I’ll keep searching.”

“I’m sure the boys appreciate these efforts,” I said, scolding myself silently for cracking wise with such an earnest man.

“One would think,” he said. “But not really. I instituted the new regimen when I arrived two years ago. Meat only on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Fish on Friday—we have our share of Catholic boys,” he said in a dramatized whisper, which included cupping his large hand to one side of his equally large mouth. “But I feel that fish is a healthful option, religious edicts aside. And the rest of the week we serve vegetarian fare.”

“Did you find anything?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“When you searched Joey Figlio’s belongings, did you find anything interesting?”

“No poems, if that’s what you’re aiming at.”

“I’m casting a wide net,” I said. “I’m interested in anything that little JD might have squirreled away under his mattress.”

“There was nothing written at all,” said Dienst. “As I’ve said before, I’m not entirely convinced he knows how to read and write.”

I cocked my head. “But there was something.”

“I hate to disappoint you, Miss Stone,” he said just as the Stravinsky came to an end. The needle scratched round and round, bumping against the paper label. Dienst stood and switched off the hi-fi. “There was nothing out of the ordinary. Just his dirty clothes, a transistor radio—stolen, surely—twenty-three cents, and his thermos bottle.”

“He brought back a thermos, or was it already here?” I asked.

Dr. Dienst looked alarmed. Had he overlooked an important detail? “It was already among his things when he escaped and stole your car,” he mumbled. “Just a run-of-the-mill thermos bottle. Red-and-black plaid.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Dr. Dienst called Frank Olney to give him the news. I watched him silently as he clutched the receiver tightly in his hand, explaining how he had discovered the thermos among Joey’s possessions.

“Miss Stone says the girl’s mother mentioned a missing thermos from the lunch box you found in the snow,” said Dienst. “I thought it wise to inform you immediately in the unlikely event that Joey has the girl’s thermos and not his own.”

Frank said something on the other end of the line, and Dienst nodded. “Of course. I’ll confiscate it immediately and hold it here until you arrive.”

He replaced the receiver and gave me a sheepish shrug.

While Dienst’s went to recover the thermos, I waited outside his office and reviewed the new information in my head. By his own admission, Joey Figlio had been caught in the Metzger barn by Darleen’s stepfather well after dark on the evening she’d disappeared. He was—seemingly—in possession of her missing thermos. A thermos Irene Metzger had filled and placed in her daughter’s lunch box that very morning. Did that mean Joey Figlio was a killer? He’d threatened me twice with a knife and left me to die on a frozen stretch of desolate county highway. And he’d definitely tried to murder Ted Russell. He was a deeply disturbed boy, at least by my reckoning, and I had no doubts he could kill. But could he kill Darleen? Did he love her as much as he claimed? And would that even matter? Perhaps his love justified murder in his twisted mind. He had written on the back of his photograph that if he couldn’t have Darleen, no one else would. I recalled the envelope in Darleen’s locker. The one with the money, the phony driver’s license—a good enough forgery to get the underage girl married—and the letter from Wilbur Burch, outlining their plans for a secret and illegal elopement to Arizona. If Joey Figlio had learned of the plan, could he have carried out his threat and killed the girl he loved? I wasn’t sure, but the pallor of