Girls of Tender Age, Chapter 22 (Final Section)
Reader Advisory: some readers may find this segment disturbing
In Chapter Twenty-Two the central horror of Tirone Smith’s childhood is almost too difficult to read. Tirone Smith is not one for sensationalism, though, and crafted detail follows crafted detail in grim succession. The aftermath of the murder of 11-year-old Irene Fiedorowicz starts with a police officer leaving for work late at night.
Girls of Tender Age, Chapter 22 (Final Section)
By Mary-Ann Tirone Smith
OFFICER MICHAEL PROCCACINO left for work at 11:30 P.M. after dozing on and off through the fights on television. His wife was in bed. It had been three hours since a little girl was strangled in his backyard and her body left lying in the rain next to his toolshed.
He changed, got in his car, turned on the ignition and the windshield wipers and lights, and immediately looked over his shoulder in order to back out of the driveway. If he had looked at his backyard illuminated by his headlights, he might have seen Irene’s body just on the other side of the white picket fence in front of his toolshed. But then again, he might not have because the rain was falling heavily as midnight approached. No one had called him about the child who had gone missing right there in his neighborhood. When he arrived at police headquarters a few minutes before twelve, he took off his rain gear, shook out the coat, hung it up, and went to his office.
At 12:03 A.M., he received the first radio dispatch of the evening concerning a missing child. He passed it back to the radio dispatcher to transmit to all cruisers on patrol. Cops walking their midnight beats were not sent the dispatch. Missing children always turned up. Sometimes in their own beds. In addition, this particular child lived in Charter Oak Terrace. The cops weren’t feeling the pressure they’d have had placed upon them if it had been a little rich girl from West Hartford.
It was a quiet night. There were no updates on the missing child throughout Officer Proccacino’s shift.
At seven the next morning, his shift ended and he called his wife to wake her, which was his habit, and went out to his car. The rain had stopped.
Over the next half hour, Mrs. Proccacino got dressed and cooked breakfast. She was just finishing when she heard her husband’s car pull into the driveway at seven-thirty. Officer Proccacino’s headlights lit up his yard for the instant prior to his turning them off. The light bounced off the white picket fence, something the officer was vaguely aware of. He came through the back door just as his wife went to the kitchen sink, where she happened to glance out the window. The sky was overcast and the feeble light of a winter morning was even dimmer than usual but she noticed what seemed to be a pile of clothes between the picket fence and the toolshed. Mrs. Proccacino thought laundry had blown off the clothesline next door in the previous night’s rainstorm.
When the police officer walked into the kitchen, he was about to tell his wife of the child gone missing from Charter Oak Terrace—the D section just down the street—when she said to him, What’s that outside, Mike? The laundry from next door?
Officer Proccacino peered through the window and knew instantly what he was seeing between the fence and the shed. His brain registered the color red and then it registered body. He knew the missing child had been wearing a red jacket. As he raced outside, he remembered how his dog had been barking the night before. His stomach turned over.
He stood beside Irene and then bent down. Her face was swollen and blue. A trickle of blood was coming from her nose and a few drops had spilled onto her jacket. Around her neck was a silk scarf tied so tightly that it was sunk deep into her neck. He noted the bulky knot. Officer Proccacino knew Irene was dead but he followed procedure. Without moving her outflung arm, he felt Irene’s wrist for a pulse.
Then he stood and ran back to the house. As he dialed headquarters, he said to his wife, We had a report of a missing child last night. She’s out behind our fence and she’s dead.
Mrs. Proccacino grabbed a kitchen chair and put it behind her husband’s knees and he sank into it. Within minutes, the yard at 80 Coolidge Street was overrun with police officers, the first, Policewoman Ellen Brown, one of Hartford’s two policewomen, who was on foot patrol nearest to the address. The Hartford Police Department was the first in the country to hire female police officers for jobs other than taking dictation. They could not be placed in line for promotion though. Policewoman Brown couldn’t believe that no one had told her about a child who was missing from her own neighborhood beat.
There was no crime lab in Hartford. The state had a coroner’s office and the coroner had a medical examiner available to him. But the coroner could not be reached and neither could his assistant, so the backup from West Hartford, Dr. Harry Allen, was called up on the Proccacinos’ kitchen phone. He arrived fifteen minutes later. He examined the scarf around Irene’s neck. Dr. Allen asked, We got a Navy man here?
One of the cops stepped forward. He had survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. He looked down at Irene, scrutinized the scarf around her neck and said, That’s your basic square knot. We do it neater than civilians. We do it like that.
Captain Jimmy Egan, head of the Vice Squad arrived. Egan looked down at Irene and remembered the station house talk two weeks earlier of a possible assault that took place on Beaufort Street. He feared he might have a rapist on his hands, one who had turned to murder. (This was a time when the word serial meant a short film played before the main feature and was not applied to rapists or killers.) At that point, Egan decided to wait before telling the chief his suspicions. He would first check out the report filed on the Beaufort Street attack. Egan knew he’d somehow have to find a few minutes at headquarters to hunt up the report and read it right away. Every police officer in Hartford would soon be on the streets, including him. Especially him.
While the crowd of cops on the scene expressed relief that Irene was fully clothed, obviously hadn’t been sexually assaulted, Egan scanned the ground where she lay. He noted her shoe half off and then he saw a sliver of pink silk under the corner of the toolshed.
Just then, Hartford’s Chief of Police, Michael J. Godfrey, came running into the yard. He looked down at Irene and then followed Jimmy Egan’s gaze to the corner of the shed and what lay beneath.
[END OF GIRLS OF TENDER AGE, FINAL SECTION OF CHAPTER 22]