Free No Stone Unturned by James W. Ziskin Page B

ignoring him. “What’s he see in her?”
    “Who can say? Every Saturday night I see the prettiest girls in high school swooning over the cheapest punks and greasers in town. Nice, smart girls. Even girls like Jordan Shaw.”
    “I thought she went out with Tom Quint,” I said.
    “She did, but there was a goon she took up with for a while that last summer before college. His name was Pukey Boyle. A hood, a loser who never graduated high school. I kicked him out of here about five years ago for stealing magazines. After that, he used to wait in his car while Jordan bought him cigarettes. Now he sews fingers into gloves at Fowler’s Mill down by the river.”
    “Seems like a strange match,” I said, recalling Judge Shaw’s shudder earlier that evening. “What do you suppose she saw in him?”
    Fadge shrugged his shoulders and explained that a lot of New Holland girls displayed similar poor judgment at about that age.
    “Puerto Rican boys don’t seem to be immune, either,” I added.
    Fadge smiled. “A young kid like that has a roll with an experienced lady . . . I’m sure he was overwhelmed by the whole thing. Sex is pretty scary at first.”
    “Sure,” I mumbled, “when you’re doing it with Jean Trent.”

    MONDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1960
    I rose the next morning at about five thirty. After dressing, I ran downstairs to fetch the Schenectady and Albany papers from the stoop in front of Fiorello’s. Fadge was always late, and people just took papers from the bundles left by the drivers. Back at my kitchen table, I found a two-column item on New Holland’s murder in the second section of the Gazette . “B ODY F OUND IN N EW H OLLAND W OOD ,” announced the headline. The article was thin. I couldn’t believe my luck until I noticed the byline: Harvey Dunnolt, Montgomery County Bureau Chief. He obviously hadn’t bothered to look into the story; he didn’t even have the victim’s name. Harvey lived in Schenectady and only ventured west to New Holland for county-board meetings once a month. Now he’d missed the biggest story in years.
    The Times-Union featured a concise, accurate story on the murder, but the Knickerbocker News had nothing. I smiled to myself and turned on WSCC, the local radio station. There were news flashes, bulletins, and a general frenzy over Jordan Shaw. The Capital District stations picked up on the story as the hour wore on. By eight, WGY, flagship station of the General Electric Company in Schenectady, was transmitting news of the New Holland murder as far as Montreal, Boston, Philadelphia, and Cleveland—I may be embellishing, but the weather was clear. I blessed Charlie Reese under my breath for the early edition.

    The gravel lot of the Mohawk Motel was empty when I arrived at quarter to nine. Jean Trent had said this wasn’t her high season, but I wondered how she stayed in business.
    “You again?” she said through the storm door. “You’re going to ruin my business with your newspaper stories. What do you want now?”
    “I’m still trying to find Julio,” I said, unable to shake the vision of a fiftyish Jean Trent in bed with a teenager.
    “You and the Royal Mounties. The sheriff was here yesterday looking for him. What did you tell him?”
    “I never mentioned his name. May I come in?”
    “No.” She held the door fast, her eyes difficult to read in the shadows. “I ain’t receiving visitors.”
    “Where does Julio live?” I asked as nicely as I knew how.
    “Down on the East End. I don’t know exactly.”
    “Well, what’s his last name?”
    “Some Rican name. How should I know?”
    “You pay him, don’t you?”
    “Cash. Never had to write a guy’s name on a dollar bill before. And I ain’t telling you nothing else,” she snapped. “You’ve already ruined me with your nosing around.”
    She slammed the door shut and bolted it tight. I walked back to my car, and Jean watched me through a window as I drove away. Not ready to throw in the towel, I pulled