Stone Cold Dead by James W. Ziskin

Author:James W. Ziskin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633880498
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2015-04-16T16:00:00+00:00

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.

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