A Death in Canaan (5 page)

Marion hung up quickly. “Peter says he needs the ambulance,” she said. “Something's happened to his mother.” In the hallway between the den and the living room, Mickey was grabbing for his orange ambulance jacket with VFW in black letters on the back. Geoffrey dashed for the door. His car was out of gas, so he jumped into the little Toyota that belonged to their friend Fran Kaplan, a nurse. Marion, Mickey, and Fran took the Chevelle. By the time they got to the bottom of the hill, Geoffrey and the Toyota were out of sight.

At the four-way stop by the Arco station, Mickey made a quick left and drove faster. The ambulance was parked at Geer, the nursing home across from the VFW. When they got there the three of them jumped out of the car and ran to the ambulance. Within seconds they were back on Route 7, heading south.

Peter stood at the edge of the road, waiting. It was very dark. The floodlights that Barbara used to read by, at the corners of the house, were turned off. Peter hadn't turned them on because the switch was in the closet, in the rear room. He didn't want to go through the bedroom, so he waited in the dark. The gas station across the road was closed. The night was thick and black as Peter strained to see.

Then he saw the headlights of the Toyota, pinpoints of light that grew rounder and brighter as the little car hurtled down the long straight stretch of road. Geoffrey braked sharply and leaped out. He ran over to Peter.

“Where is she?” Geoff asked.

“She's in the bedroom,” Peter said.

Geoff ran toward the house, with Peter just behind him. Geoff didn't wait at the door. He raced right in, into the living room, to the bedroom door. Then he stopped.

Barbara lay sprawled on the floor, a pool of blood around her neck. Her short black curly hair was soggy with blood. Her throat had been slashed and her vocal cords hung out. She was nearly beheaded.

In the light from the clamp-on reading lamp, Barbara's body shone whitely, the blood glaring around her. There were gaping cuts in her stomach. Three of her ribs were broken, and both her thighbones were broken too. Her legs were spread apart; she was nude. Her blue jeans and underpants lay beside her body, soaking wet. Barbara's left arm was lying flat, but her right arm was bent at the elbow, in an upraised position. Her right fist was clenched. Her nose was broken. Her eyes were blackened and staring open.

Geoff stared at Barbara. He turned and stared at Peter.

Peter looked blankly at Geoff. “Well, come on then,” Peter said after a moment, his voice tight. “Let's go outside.”

In the ambulance, Mickey was trying to get Sharon Hospital, but he couldn't get through, so he called Canaan barracks. They said they had sent the Falls Village ambulance as a backup and had dispatched a trooper.

“I know,” Mickey said. “He's passing me right now.”

Mickey swerved a little to let the approaching cruiser whiz by him, then speeded up, and pulled up to Peter's house just behind the trooper.

Bruce McCafferty, curly haired, blue-eyed, and boyish, the prototypical rookie cop, just ten months on the force, was working the four to midnight shift. He'd been traveling Route 44 near Furnace Hill Road, doing routine highway patrol, when he got the radio call from Trooper John Calkins at the barracks, who'd just heard from Sharon Hospital. The police got the call from the hospital at 9:58
P.M
.

When the blue police car with its flashing lights came into view, Peter began jumping up and down, waving, motioning it into the yard. Trooper McCafferty got out and ran over to Peter and Geoffrey.

“Where is she?” McCafferty asked.

“She's in the bedroom,” Peter said.

McCafferty hurried into the house. He knelt on one knee beside Barbara and felt her left wrist for a pulse, but couldn't find it. He went out to the car and radioed the barracks, to ask his supervisor to come. Then, as though he could not be sure of so dreadful a sight, he went back into the house. He looked at Barbara again, then he came outside and made a second radio call to the barracks.

“I have a possible one twenty-five,” McCafferty said, giving the code number for a homicide.

“Are you kidding?” the other voice said. “Then you better seal off the house.”

Peter and Geoffrey were pushing furniture around in the living room, making a path for the stretcher. One of them had knocked over the little portable heater. When McCafferty came back in, he told them to stop. Peter looked at him, then went over near the kitchen, as far away from the bedroom door as he could get. He sat on a chair at the edge of the kitchen doorway, near the kitchen cabinet with the brown leather pouch hanging from its side. There were three or four knives in the pouch, including a knife that Wayne Collier, one of Peter's friends, had given Barbara when she had complained that she didn't have a really good carving knife. That knife was in the pouch now, with part of the handle sticking out. The knife had a six-inch blade, or a little less, because its tip had been broken off.

Mickey came into the bedroom, knelt down, and felt for a pulse. Fran Kaplan felt for a pulse too. Then Mickey went out to the ambulance to get a blanket to put over Barbara.

From the doorway to the bedroom, Marion looked at Barbara, but she didn't go in. She could see blood spattered around the room, on some freshly ironed shirts hanging on the curtain rod. A green chair with brown wooden legs, in the corner of the bedroom, was spotted with blood. There was a gray steel tool chest near Barbara's foot. The back door was standing partly open.

Barbara lay flung across the floor, her feet pointing toward the doorway where Marion stood. Her head was turned toward her left. Her nose was pushed to one side; blood had oozed out of the nostrils and from her mouth. Marion noticed that the soles of her feet were filthy.

She turned away then and saw Peter sitting on the chair, near the kitchen. He was shivering. She went over and put her arms around him.

Peter looked up at Marion.

“Can I come home with you?” he asked.

“Yes, Peter,” Marion said. “I'll yell at you, just like I yell at my boys, but you can come home with me.”

“Did I do the right thing?” Peter asked.

“Yes, you did,” Marion told him.

Peter wasn't wearing a jacket, only his long-sleeved brown knit shirt. He was still shivering and Marion asked Geoff to let Peter wear his coat. Geoff took off his beloved navy pea coat, the coat he wore nearly twelve months of the year, and Marion draped it around Peter's shoulders.

At nine minutes past ten, McCafferty's supervisor, Sgt. Percy Salley, arrived. He went into the bedroom and looked at Barbara, then he came back out into the living room, where Peter and Marion stood.

“Are you all right?” Sergeant Salley asked Peter.

“Yes, I'm all right,” Peter said.

Sergeant Salley told Peter to open his shirt and hold out his hands. He examined Peter's chest and turned his hands over, the palms up, then down. Peter looked blank and, watching him, Marion realized that no one had told him his mother was dead.

Sergeant Salley went out to his cruiser, then, and called his own supervisor, Lt. James Shay, at his house on Silken Road in Granby. Shay directed Salley to get everybody out of the house. The sergeant walked back to the little crowd of people standing in the living room and told them to go outside. Peter got up from the chair and followed Marion across the room, to the front door. As he passed the bedroom door, he turned his head and looked. He saw the white sheet over Barbara, covering her head. He looked away and walked past, out of the house.

Now the darkness outside was sliced with the flashing lights of the police cars, lined up in front of the house like bright sentinels. Bruce McCafferty took Peter into the front seat of the cruiser, so he could make a statement. McCafferty turned on the overhead light and another light that had been installed in the front seat for reading. McCafferty took the statement on paper that had the constitutional rights printed on it. He gave the paper to Peter to read, then Peter put his initials after each of the five items.

Peter asked McCafferty if he was being accused of a crime. McCafferty said no.

McCafferty asked Peter if he had any idea who did it. Peter said no.

I, Peter A. Reilly, aged 18 (DOB 03/02/55) of Route 63, Falls Village, Connecticut, make the following voluntary statement: I went to Great Barrington, Massachusetts, with Geoffrey Madow this afternoon. Geoffrey had to check in to see if he was working this weekend. He works at Shopwell in Great Barrington. We left there between 3:00 and 3:30
P.M
. When we left there we went to Geoffrey's house and watched TV. Geoffrey had dinner and we started to my house. We passed the ambulance by Deely Road. We figured it was going to pick up Geoffrey's uncle who has been having chest pains. After passing the ambulance we went to the Arco station located at the intersection of Route 7 and 44. Geoffrey bought $1 worth of gas and we went back to see where the ambulance was going. When we found it, it was by Locust Hill Road in East Canaan. We followed the ambulance to Norfolk, then turned around and went back to Geoffrey's house to see if it was his uncle. I waited in the car when Geoffrey went into the house. We left Geoffrey's house and went directly to my house. We arrived at my house around 6:45. I was late for dinner and apologized to my mother for being late. We both stayed at my house until 7:20
P.M
. At this time we both left for the Teen Center in North Canaan. Geoffrey drove his car and I drove my mother's car. We got there around 7:30–7:35
P.M
. and waited until about 7:50
P.M
. for Father Paul to get there. We stayed there until about 9:30
P.M
. I dropped John Sochocki off at his house located on the road to the dump. After dropping John off I came directly home. I arrived home between 9:50–9:55
P.M
. I parked the car in front of the house and got out to fix a headlight. I got back in the car and shut it off. I got out and locked the car. I went inside and said, Mom, I'm home. My mother didn't answer. I looked through the doorway and didn't see her in bed. I then saw her lying on the floor. She was having a problem breathing and she was gasping. I saw the blood at this time. I didn't touch my mother but went straight to the telephone and called Mickey Madow and told her that my mom was lying on the floor and was having trouble breathing and said that there was blood all over the place. Mrs. Madow told me to call my family doctor, that they would be right down. I then called information and asked for Dr. Bornemann in Canaan. I got the number and called him. I got Mrs. Bornemann and told her the situation. She told me Dr. Bornemann was out of town and that I should call the Sharon Hospital Emergency Room. I went outside and threw the charcoal grill out of the way. I then moved my car to the right side of the house. I then went to the driveway and waited for the police or ambulance. While I was waiting, Geoffrey Madow came and we both went in and looked at my mother. Then we went back outside to wait.

I have read the above and it is the truth.

Each of the four pages was signed Peter A. Reilly and witnessed by Trooper Bruce McCafferty, badge number 723.

At 11:10, Lieutenant Shay arrived, tall and square-jawed, the very image of a flinty detective on the trail of murder. Lieutenant Shay had worked out of Hartford in the detective division for nearly a dozen years and had been promoted to command Troop B in Canaan just four months before Barbara died. Since he'd taken over the Canaan command, this was his first homicide. He walked over to the cruiser and spoke to Peter. “Let me see your hands,” the detective said. Peter held out his hands. The detective looked at them closely, then walked away from the cruiser, back toward the house.

Lieutenant Shay was not in uniform, and when he walked away, Peter turned to McCafferty, sitting behind the wheel.

“Who's that?” Peter asked. McCafferty told him that was the commander, Lieutenant Shay. “I'd like to become a state trooper,” Peter told McCafferty. “I wonder what kind of marks you need to get in high school for that job?”

It was about 11:30 when McCafferty finished taking Peter's statement, and the scene, by now, was bustling. A police van had pulled up in front of the house, one of a line of police cars that rimmed the highway. Mickey could see that they didn't need the ambulance, so he drove it back to Geer, picked up the car, and drove back. Lieutenant Shay was annoyed that Mickey had covered Barbara with a blanket and told him so.

Other troopers had awakened the Kruses, in the big house next door, and told them about Barbara.

“She's a mess,” one of them said to old Mr. Kruse, who stood in the back doorway. The Kruses said they had gone to bed around ten, as usual, after their usual hot cocoa. They'd seen Barbara outdoors reading, sometime during the evening, but after that they'd seen nothing, heard nothing.

Lieutenant Shay came back to the car and told Peter to come along with him. He took Peter to the back door of the Kruses' house, and into the kitchen, and told him to take off all his clothes.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Peter said. Lieutenant Shay waited in the kitchen while another trooper went into the bathroom with Peter.