Chapter 33. The Arrest
I was up very early the next day, Thursday, the 7th, and when I headed for the door about fifteen minutes before usual, my Mom asked me why, and, with no real reason to lie, I just said, “I’ve got to talk to Junior.” Mom was getting used to this, so she just shrugged and said goodbye.
When I got to the station, he was there, as I had hoped, and the Chief wasn’t, which was even better. We sat in a little private room and I told him everything Kate and I had talked about and what we thought. I sort of started with our conclusion, but Junior made me back up and start at the beginning, which made sense, I guess. Only thing was, it took quite a bit longer than I thought it would. By the time I got to the critical part, about Roger maybe seeing a car leaving the school parking lot, it was time to leave.
He saw me looking at the clock and asked if I was late for school. I nodded, and he said he’d give me a ride up to the school. He stopped for a word with the dispatcher on the way out and we headed for one of the cruisers. Sergeant Slingerland passed me on his way in, giving me a look of pure hatred and disgust, which I returned with my practiced face of angelic innocence.
I got to ride in the front seat this time, and we continued the conversation up Pearl Street and along Summit to the school. The seventh graders were still standing outside the east door as Junior slowly eased the police car into the parking lot.
The kids had gotten used to seeing cops around, especially since the murder, but it was still a novelty to see one of their own sitting in a cruiser beside a policeman. So there was a lot of chatter and excitement, but then the bell rang and everyone had to go inside.
Mrs. Angolano was outside, and she walked over to the car as Junior rolled down his window and beckoned to her.
“Good morning, Mrs. Angolano.”
“Good morning, Junior. Haven’t seen you for a while. How’s married life?” She had a big smile on her face; Junior’s charm seemed to be equally effective on all women, young and old.
“It’s great, thank you. My wife remembers you fondly, and she was just saying the other day how much she misses this school.”
“Wonderful! She was a sweetheart, for sure. What can we do for you today?”
“Well, I need Denny for a few minutes more, if you don’t mind.”
“That’s fine, Junior. He’s in my homeroom, so I’ll take care of it. Not in any trouble, is he?”
“No, no, not this time. He’s being very helpful, as a matter of fact.”
“Good, good.” When her glance shifted from Junior to me, it changed from one of charmed pleasure to one of deep suspicion. “Just send him in when you’re finished.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Angolano.”
So we finished our conversation sitting in the car outside the school, very close to where Sally Delisle had been killed. Junior had listened with interest to our assessment of what happened that day, but he didn’t seem surprised by anything until I got to the point of repeating what Roger had said to Jane. He then asked me to repeat it again, and listened carefully as I explained our analysis (Kate’s, really) of what it might mean. It seemed obvious from his reaction that neither Roger nor Jane had repeated that casual remark to the Police.
Junior sat silently for a minute when I had finished, then he smiled at me. “That’s good analysis, Denny. We might have to make you and Kate detectives.”
I grinned, just briefly imagining a fantasy scenario of Kate and I being announced as the new detective sergeants of the Essex Junction Police Department, while Slingerland was demoted to patrolman.
“Alright, kid, you’d better go in. You know there’s only so much I can tell you, but I’ll try to find a way to keep you in the loop. Be sure to tell Kate how much I appreciate your help.”
So I ran into the building, passing the Principal, who waved at me as he went out to have a word with Junior.
It was an interesting day. For one thing, some of the kids who had been hanging outside the door when Junior pulled up started a rumor that I had been arrested. Well, it was pretty obvious that I hadn’t, because I was right there, going to all my classes, just as I always did, but, school being school, that didn’t stop the rumors. It took all day, and a lot of explaining, before that rumor died down.
Kate and I were in a strange situation. We felt that we really shouldn’t say anything about our suspicions, except, of course, she told Jackie, and I told Win and Tom and Rollo. What that meant was that six kids were walking around the school all day burdened with the belief, if not certain knowledge, that one of our teachers had killed Miss Delisle. Every class I went to, all day, I couldn’t help thinking “is he the one? or is she the one?” I’m sure the others were feeling the same way, and it made it really hard to concentrate.
The rest of the kids, and the teachers and staff, had no way of knowing what we suspected, so it was just a normal day for them. I had a couple of chances to chat with Kate during the day. We didn’t know what to expect. We hoped, obviously, that Junior’s response would be to arrange to have Roger Warren questioned, as soon as possible. Junior had confirmed that the Police had a list of vehicles driven by all the staff of the school, updated at the start of the school year, and, if we were right, they would be able to identify who was at the school that Saturday. If we were wrong, and Roger hadn’t seen a car there, it wouldn’t mean anything. Or, if he had seen a car, but it was one they couldn’t identify, it would tell them that someone else was there, but they wouldn’t be any closer to figuring out who it was.
Well, nothing happened that day, nothing at school, anyway, and we walked home not knowing if anything would happen.
As we watched “Perry Mason” on TV that night, I couldn’t help thinking about poor Sally Delisle. The story wasn’t an exact parallel, as “The Case of the Frustrated Folksinger” was about a young woman who was wrongly charged with murder, rather than being killed herself, but still, she was a beautiful, naïve girl from Tennessee who got mixed up with a manipulative, evil man, and ended up involved in a brutal murder. All I could think about was Sally and Roger. At twelve years old, I didn’t know a lot about adult romances, but, seeing what happened to “Amy Jo Jennings” and what had happened to Miss Delisle, I was sure glad I wasn’t a girl.
I went to school the next morning in the same anxious, frustrated state, hoping something was going to happen, but not knowing exactly what it would be, and having no control over it, anyway. I talked to Kate before we went in, and she was in the same condition. It didn’t take long, though, before we started to hear things.
In a school filled with two hundred plus eleven-to-thirteen year-olds, the rumor machine operates almost unchecked, in spite of all the efforts of the staff to control it. So, before we had even left homeroom for our first class, the whole school knew that Mrs. Rock was not in today. Mr. Camp, the principal, was taking the first English class while they tried to find a sub.
Well, that had everybody buzzing, because Mrs. Rock was considered practically indestructible. No one could remember her ever missing a day, for any reason. Of course, there were six of us who knew, or thought we knew, why she was out. On the face of it, it seemed simple – whichever teacher wasn’t there today must have been arrested for Miss Delisle’s murder. It really wasn’t that simple, but that was our first thought.
We had agreed, the six of us, to keep our mouths shut until there was some kind of official announcement. That was hard to do, but no one else had any reason to connect her absence with the murder, so there wasn’t any real pressure to talk about it.
Kate was agitated, though, and she grabbed me between classes for a whispered talk. Jackie was with her, listening and making sure no one else got close enough to hear.
“Listen, Denny, I’ve been thinking about it. I think it had to be her.”
“But, we thought…”
“I know – she didn’t take the stack of papers, so we thought she couldn’t have been at the school. But if she was here, what would be the most logical reason for her to leave those papers untouched?”
“Umm, so no one would know she was here, or think she was here.”
“Exactly. And why would she want that?”
“Because she killed Miss Delisle.”
Kate nodded with a satisfied look, and Jackie nodded, too. So that was what we thought, and, for the rest of the morning, we were convinced that the murder was solved, and the next thing we would hear would be an official announcement of Rock’s arrest.
I went home for lunch, as usual, and my Mom and the younger kids were sitting in front of the TV, their sandwiches on their laps. There was a special news bulletin playing, and Mom waved me to the couch and got up to grab my plate for me.
It must be important, because Richard Gallagher, the evening news anchor, was on at eleven-forty-five in the morning. And there was the beaming, pompous Chief Mulrooney, at the Police Station, in front of a microphone.
“Yesterday afternoon, Essex Junction Police officers, assisted by officers of Burlington PD, executed a search warrant at the Burlington home of Mrs. Catherine Rock, a teacher at the Prospect Street Intermediate School here in Essex Junction. The home, and Mrs. Rock’s vehicle, were thoroughly searched for evidence related to the murder of Miss Sally Delisle. Mrs. Rock was brought in for questioning.
“After extensive questioning, Mrs. Rock was released and returned to her home last evening. This morning, we have formally charged Mr. Roger Warren, of Hawthorne, California, with first-degree murder in the death of Miss Sally Delisle. Mr. Warren is already in custody in Burlington on drug trafficking charges.”
Well, my jaw dropped when I heard that, and I missed the next couple of minutes of the broadcast as my Mom tried to hush the other kids and I tried to clear my head. This was not what I expected at all.
My dad was at work, and the older kids had lunch at the High School, so it was just me and Mom and the younger siblings. The kids were interested, but they didn’t really know how much the case affected me. Mom knew, though, and she could tell I was surprised.
The Chief was answering questions now.
“We’re considering that. We certainly could bring charges against Mrs. Rock for withholding evidence; for not coming forward sooner with what she knew, but, given the fact that she is cooperating fully now, and given the value of her testimony against Mr. Warren, I’m inclined to think we won’t prosecute her.
“Yes, that’s right. All the teachers and staff at the school were interviewed in the first days of our investigation. She did not volunteer any information at that time, but, as I said, she is now cooperating fully.
“No, we have not found the murder weapon.
“Not necessarily. We still hope to find the murder weapon, obviously, but we have a very strong case without it.”
My Mom insisted that I eat my sandwich, which I hadn’t touched, and I munched silently and sipped my Hawaiian Punch while I tried to figure out where we had gone wrong. We were convinced it couldn’t have been Roger, and now the cops were saying they had a very strong case against him. Well, maybe they did, but, in my head, it was all a big mess.
Back at school, some of the teachers and the other kids had seen the broadcast, so pretty soon everybody knew about it. Most people were happy to hear the news; Roger was the one everybody had suspected all along, and it was a relief to have somebody officially charged after almost two weeks. But I was uncomfortable with it, and Kate was downright distraught. She was convinced that we were right and they had gotten it wrong.
“I know,” she told me, “we don’t know what she said, or what evidence she gave them, but it just doesn’t make any sense.”
The other guys, especially the ones who had thought all along that he did it, were satisfied with the situation, and they were pretty persuasive.
The afternoon went pretty quickly; they had gotten a sub in for English after the first couple of classes, a young woman named Miss Randall. She was okay, but a little lost. It’s tough when the teacher you’re subbing for hasn’t had a chance to prepare a lesson plan for you, and most of us kids had no mercy when it came to taking advantage of the situation. By the time the bell rang, we had her believing we were so far ahead of Mrs. Rock’s schedule that there was no need at all for any homework.
I talked again briefly with Kate, but nothing had changed, and we didn’t know what we could do about it. So I went home for the weekend, almost convinced that Kate and I had been wrong, and Roger was the killer.
Then, about eight o’clock, Jane called, and she was furious.
“Listen, kid, this is the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard. I can’t really talk right now; I’m too mad, I’ve had a couple of drinks, and I’m about to have a couple more. Can you come over in the morning? About nine? No, better make it ten.”
“Sure. Can I bring my friend, Kate, if she’ll come?”
“Who? Oh, that smart girl? Yeah, yeah, bring her. I’ll see you then.”
Well, obviously Jane had something to say, and I was anxious to hear it. I called Kate, and she was just as eager. She said she’d meet me at the Bake Shop at quarter of, and we’d walk over to Jane’s.
I got to the Bake Shop a little early and waited for Kate. I would have sat and waited for her, and admired my dream girl while she worked, but I didn’t have any money. I’d already spent all my allowance. Amy had given me a few free hot chocolates since I got in her good graces, but I didn’t want to presume and risk making her angry at me. It was really busy, being Saturday morning, with about twenty customers, either sitting at the counter or waiting to buy pastries to go, and three girls waiting on them, so there was no time to talk, anyway.
When Kate came in, I was just standing there, behind a wall of paying customers. I explained that I was penniless, and that Jane would probably make us cocoa anyway. Then Amy called my name and beckoned us over to the counter. Kate explained that we were going over to talk to Sally’s friend, Jane, and Amy quickly grabbed a white bag, went to the display case and pulled out a few items, then came back and handed the bag to Kate. Kate had a dollar in her hand, but Amy just waved us away and gave us a little wink.
Jane was in a little better mood than when she talked to me on the phone the night before, and only slightly hungover, she said. She had met Kate once before, with Sally, but I introduced them anyway.
She was halfway through a pot of coffee, but she had made some cocoa for us, as I had expected, and Kate handed her the bag from the Bake Shop.
“Oh, wow! What did you bring?”
“I don’t know,” Kate answered, “Amy just gave it to us.”
The bag held a cream-filled doughnut, a buttercrunch (yes!) and a cinnamon bun. We were each able to have something we liked without any fighting, and we settled down in Jane’s living room.
Jane started right in. “I just can’t believe it. That woman turned everything around, made Sally look horrible, and set Roger up to take the rap. He didn’t kill Sally, I’m sure of it, and now I think that she did. I think Mrs. Rock is the one who killed her.”
I was deep into my doughnut, but Kate was ready to respond.
“That’s the conclusion Denny and I came to. That is, we thought that it must be one of the teachers that Roger saw driving away, and whichever one it was probably killed her.”
“Well, you were right about the car. The cops questioned Roger Thursday morning – it was the one you call Junior, and Roger told him he had seen a black ’58 Buick Special driving away as he drove in.”
We both nodded, knowing that’s what Rock drove.
“So they apparently had a list of vehicles, they identified it, and they got a search warrant for the car and her house. They waited until she was home from school, then they picked her up for questioning and did the search.”
“Excuse me, Jane,” Kate asked, “How did you get those details? Have you talked to Roger?”
“Oh, sorry, I should explain. No, I haven’t been able to talk to him yet. The lawyer says he can probably get me in on Monday after work. See, when they arrested him; that is, for the new charges – he was already locked up, of course – he called Berthelsen, his attorney, and asked if he would defend him on the murder charge, as well. He said yes, and he went to work immediately. He asked to see the witness statement from Mrs. Rock, and they had to let him have it.
“Now, Berthelsen still thinks I can help him get Roger off on the drug charges, so I told him I wanted all this new info, and Roger okayed it, so he read me Mrs. Rock’s full statement last night on the phone. That was before I called you, Denny, and that’s why I was so mad.”
Well, that was fortunate. There was no way we would get to talk to Roger, or Mrs. Rock, but at least we would get the exact statement she gave the police, or as well as Jane could remember it.
“Okay,” Jane continued, “Now let me just tell you everything that happened, from what I got from Berthelsen, and from the statement. Like I said, Junior interviewed Roger on Thursday morning, and they waited until she got home from work to pick her up. And get this; Junior was the one who made the breakthrough, but it was Slingerland who picked up Mrs. Rock and questioned her, with the Chief sitting in for part of the interview.”
Kate and I looked at each other and we both grimaced. Rock may have been old, ugly, and mean, and very possibly a murderer, but we both knew she was smarter than those two put together.
“So she somehow got them to believe that she was innocent?” I asked, “And convinced them that Roger did it?”
“That’s exactly what she did. And it was all lies, from start to finish. In the first place, she told them that Sally had asked to meet her there at the school.”
Kate shook her head in disbelief. “But that goes against all the testimony they’ve heard thus far.” She held up her hands and ticked off fingers. “You, Roger, Old Ben, me, and Jackie; that’s five people who have told them what Sally was doing that day, and all of us can swear that she had no intention of meeting Mrs. Rock. In fact, that was exactly what she wanted to avoid.”
“Absolutely right. But if they believe that Sally was lying to all of us, then it’s just her word against Mrs. Rock’s. And it gets worse. She actually said that the two of them were very close; that Sally was ‘like a daughter to her,’ if you can believe that.”
Kate was practically sputtering, trying to get her astonished words out. “But they can’t believe that! No one who had seen them together would believe that, and every other witness would contradict it!”
“You’re right. But those two, the Chief and the fat Sergeant, fell for it hook, line, and sinker. She even convinced them that the reason she hadn’t come forward earlier was that she wanted to protect Sally.”
“Huh?” I asked, “Protect someone who’s already dead?”
“Her reputation; Mrs. Rock wanted to protect Sally’s reputation. She thought if she kept quiet that Sally would be remembered as a sweet, innocent girl in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Okay,” Kate said slowly, trying to make sense of it, “So how would Mrs. Rock coming forward change that?”
“Because of what she told them. She said that Sally told her about Roger selling pot, and that she was helping him, against her will.”
“That’s crazy,” I said, “She wouldn’t have told her that; she didn’t tell anyone, even the people she liked and trusted. Nobody knew anything about that until the Burlington cops arrested him.”
“Yeah. So, obviously, she made up this cover story after she found out about Roger. She hoped she’d never have to come forward; I’m not sure if she even knew he had seen her car driving away. But she was prepared with this story, just in case.”
“I just can’t believe,” Kate said, “that that would be enough to convince them. If she knew any of this stuff, she clearly had an obligation to tell the police. All of the teachers and staff were interviewed after they found the body, and she said nothing. I don’t see how that doesn’t make her guilty of withholding evidence, and a really strong suspect for the murder.”
“Well, there was one more thing she told them, and it was what really made me fighting mad. She told them Sally was pregnant.”
Kate and I were stunned. It was the last thing we expected to hear. Kate put her hands to her head and shook her head back and forth.
“Look, you guys,” Jane said, reassuringly, “In the first place, I can tell you without a doubt that she wasn’t. Sally spent the night here several times in the last month, and I can assure you that she wasn’t pregnant.”
She looked at Kate in a knowing way and spread her hands in a “you know what I mean” gesture. Kate nodded.
“And furthermore, it’s another thing that she would never have told Mrs. Rock, of all people. But those two cops must have thought that it made perfect sense that she would try to protect a young girl ‘in the family way,’ which is the way she said it in her statement, and that that was why she kept quiet.”
“Unbelievable,” I said, “I mean, I can easily believe Mrs. Rock making up that story about Miss Delisle, and throwing her to the wolves…”
“Right,” Kate said, fiercely, “and ruining her reputation, which is the exact opposite of what she said she was doing. If that statement comes out in a trial, everyone will think Sally was a drug dealer and that she was pregnant.”
“But it’s almost unbelievable that Mulrooney and Slingerland would fall for it. What else did she tell them? How did she get Roger indicted?”
“Well, she told the cops that she and Sally talked in the teachers’ room until almost four, and that she offered her a ride home to Burlington. She said Sally told her that Roger was picking her up at four, and that she would wait for him. They walked down to the east entrance, and Mrs. Rock – so she said – tried again to convince Sally to ride home with her, but she was adamant. So Rock got in her car and drove away, and she said she saw Roger’s van pulling in as she drove out.”
“What about the papers?” Kate asked, “Did she say why she didn’t take the papers Sally left for her?”
“I don’t know; that wasn’t in the statement. They may not have asked her.”
“Well, it doesn’t make any sense. There’s no reason she would have left them behind except to make people think she wasn’t there.”
“I just thought of something,” I said, “She was autopsied; wouldn’t that show if she was pregnant?”
Jane nodded. “I thought of that, too, and I asked Berthelsen. He read the autopsy report, and he said it doesn’t say anything about it. He’s pretty sure they would know, from the blood and urine analysis, and he put in a call to the Examiner’s office to verify it, but they won’t respond on the weekend, if it’s not an emergency. Anyway, the cops will just say she thought she was, but she was mistaken.”
I couldn’t figure this out at all. Even if they believed every word Rock said, they still hadn’t learned anything definite that they didn’t already know. They knew Roger had planned to pick her up at four, they knew he had been at the school. The only thing new was the suggestion that Sally was helping Roger in his drug dealing. Was that enough to convict Roger of murder? Without a weapon?
So, we sat and talked about it for a while. Kate was the most logically minded of the three of us, and she was just dumbfounded that two senior police officers could believe a crime scenario that had Mrs. Rock leaving the school, Roger Warren arriving and killing Sally Delisle, then sitting in his van blowing his horn, and Old Ben arriving as Roger left, all in the space of about five minutes. She kept shaking her head in disbelief.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” she kept saying.
“Alright,” I said, “I agree. So what does make sense? What do we think really happened?”
“Well,” Kate said, “we know that it had to be sometime after three-fifteen when Sally arrived back at the school, and sometime before four when she was killed, because that’s when Roger arrived and saw Mrs. Rock leaving. I think Mrs. Rock must have arrived before Sally, or about the same time, because Sally wouldn’t have been able to get in; Mrs. Rock must have opened the door before Sally got there, or saw her outside and let her in. I think they were both in the teachers’ room; again, Sally wouldn’t have been able to get in.
“They must have had a talk; I would imagine that Sally told her whatever she meant to convey in the letter, rather than re-write it, and, at some point, Mrs. Rock decided to kill her.”
“You don’t think,” Jane asked, “that she had already planned it?”
“Well, it’s possible, but, as far as we know, Ben was the only one who knew Sally was going to be there, unless Mrs. Rock found out somehow. So I think she, Mrs. Rock, that is, was there for some other reason and just decided to do it. And I think she must have offered to give Sally a ride home, because Sally would have been standing right where you would be if you were about to get in a car when she was struck. I think Mrs. Rock made up her mind while they were still in the teachers’ room, and left the stack of papers and the letter there so no one would know she had been there. They walked down together and out to the car, and, when Sally’s back was turned to get in the car, Rock hit her over the head.”
Jane and I looked at each other silently, both digesting this seemingly plausible scenario. After a minute, Jane had a question.
“What happened to her purse and the portfolio?”
“Here’s what I think.” Kate had a small purse with her, and she looped the strap over her left shoulder. “She had the purse strap over her shoulder, like this. It’s the only way the purse would have stayed with her all the way down the hill and ended up underneath her body. She probably dropped the portfolio case when she was hit, or, if she had already opened the door, she might have put it in the back seat.”
“She might have taken it, then,” Jane said, “Mrs. Rock might still have the portfolio.”
I pointed out that both her car and house had been searched, and the cops knew about the portfolio.
“You’re right. So she would have gotten rid of it.”
Kate laughed. “Do you know how cheap Mrs. Rock is? Thrifty, she’d call it. The other teachers called her ‘inch-and-a-half-Rock,’ because that’s how short a pencil had to be before she’d let anybody throw it out. Yes, I’m sure she’d have gotten rid of it, but she’d have tried her best to get something for it.”
“Kate,” I said, “it sounds far more believable than what the cops think happened. But we still have the same unanswered question.”
“Right; what did she hit her with?”
We puzzled over that, but nobody had a good answer. As the cops had said, it could have been a rock, or a piece of wood, or a pipe. But none of those things were likely to have been right at hand. A big rock was most likely, but the killer would have had to step off the pavement and into the woods to find one, in the middle of a heavy snowstorm. If Mrs. Rock decided, while they were still in the teachers’ room, that she was going to hit Miss Delisle over the head with something, she must have had that something with her, or waiting in the car. What could that something have been?
And then I thought of it. I hesitated to say it, thinking it over in my head, not really sure if it was plausible.
“What about a bottle of whiskey?”
They both looked at me silently, and I quickly explained to Jane that Mrs. Rock was known to be a heavy drinker. Kate was aware of the rumors, but she didn’t know as much as I did, and I told them what I had heard that day when I was waiting outside the teachers’ room.
“Would it have been big enough?” Kate asked.
“If it was a fifth or a quart it would be,” said Jane, who knew a lot more than I did about such things. “But wouldn’t it break? They didn’t find any broken glass, did they?”
“They would have said, I’m sure,” I replied, “But I’m not sure if it would break, if it was full. I know who I can ask, though.”