Outstanding Praise for Julia Spencer-Fleming’s
A Fountain Filled With Blood
“The plot is complicated, and the ethical issues are even thornier. Wisely, Spencer-Fleming treats them with the same delicacy she extends to Clare’s forbidden love.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Julia Spencer-Fleming ‘pulls it off’ again in her second outing.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Despite the brutal crimes, this is a quiet and civilized story just right for those who enjoy a modern take on the old-fashioned whodunit.”
—Denver Rocky Mountain News
“Serious issues…add depth to the story. An exciting mountain rescue keeps the pages turning as the pace picks up at the end.”
—Booklist
“Even more action, more plot-twists, and more unconsummated romance than in Clare and Russ’s notable debut.”
—Kirkus Reviews
In the Bleak Midwinter
“Atmospheric…. [A] freshly conceived and meticulously plotted whodunit.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Superb!”
—Library Journal
“Terrific action scenes…. [W]hat really distinguishes In the Bleak Midwinter, however, is the author’s skillful portrayal of her protagonist’s inner conflict.”
—Washington Post Book World
“Filled with many twists and turns….[A] warm tale.”
—Midwest Book Review
“A riveting page-turner from start to finish.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Fleming hits a grand slam with In the Bleak Midwinter. The tension is constant. The dialogue is dead-on. The characters are interesting, thought-provoking, and honest. The prose soars above the quality usually found in this genre. To top it all off, the story twists and turns to the last page.”
—Denver Rocky Mountain News
“Compelling…many twists.”
—Romantic Times
“Without ever slighting the central situation of the abandoned mother and her abandoned child, Spencer-Fleming shows admirable resourcefulness in the changes she rings on it.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The prose soars…. [T]he story twists and turns to the last page.”
—Maine Sunday Telegram
St. Martin’s/Minotaur Paperbacks Titles by Julia Spencer-Fleming
IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER
A FOUNTAIN FILLED WITH BLOOD
~TO THE MEMORY OF~
VICTOR HUGO-VIDAL
1933–2002
WE WILL MEET, BUT WE WILL MISS HIM
THERE WILL BE HIS VACANT CHAIR
WE WILL LINGER TO CARESS HIM
WHILE WE BREATHE OUR EVENING PRAYER
—HENRY J. WASHBURN AND GEORGE F. ROOT
There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
Lose all their guilty stains, lose all their guilty stains;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.
The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day;
And there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away.
Washed all my sins away, washed all my sins away;
And there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away.
Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood shall never lose its power
Till all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more.
Be saved, to sin no more, be saved, to sin no more;
Till all the ransomed church of God be saved, to sin no more.
E’er since, by faith, I was the stream Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.
And shall be till I die, and shall be till I die;
Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die.
Then in a nobler, sweeter song, I’ll sing Thy power to save, When this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave.
Lies silent in the grave, lies silent in the grave;
When this poor lisping, stammering tongue lies silent in the grave.
—William Cowper, in Conyer’s Collections of Psalms and Hymns
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
The yahoos came by just after the dinner party broke up. A few young punks—three or four, picked out as streaks of white in the cab and bed of an unremarkable-looking pickup. Emil Dvorak was tucking a bottle of wine under his arm and reaching to shake his hosts’ hands when he heard the horn haloowing down the Five Mile Road like a redneck hunting cry, and the truck flashed into view of the inn’s floodlights.
“Faggots!” several voices screamed. “Burn in hell!” More obscene slurs were swallowed up in the night as the truck continued past. From their run in the back, the inn’s dogs began barking in response, high-pitched and excited.
“Goddamn it,” Ron Handler said.
“Did you see the license plate this time?” Stephen Obrowski asked.
His partner shook his head. “Too fast. Too dark.”
“Has this happened before?” Emil shifted the bottle under his other arm. The inn’s outdoor spotlight left him feeling suddenly exposed, his car brilliantly illuminated, his hosts’ faces clearly visible, as his must have been. His hand, he noticed, was damp. “Have you reported it?”
“It started a couple of weeks ago,” Steve said. “Probably kids let out of high school.”
“Released from county jail, more likely,” Ron said.
“We’ve told the police. The inn’s on the random-patrol list now.”
“Not that that helps,” Ron said. “The cops have better things to do than catch gay-bashers out cruising for a good time. The only reason we got a few drive-bys in a patrol car is that the inn is bringing in the precious turista dollar.”
“Tourism keeps Millers Kill afloat,” Emil said, “but Chief Van Alstyne’s a good man. He wouldn’t tolerate that trash, no matter what business they were targeting.”
“I better call the station and let them know we’ve been harassed again. Thank God our guests have already retired.” Ron squeezed Emil’s upper arm. “Thanks for coming. I’m sorry the evening had to end on such a sour note.” He disappeared behind the inn’s ornate double door.
Steve peered up the road. “Are you going to be okay getting back home? I don’t like the idea of you all alone on the road with those thugs out there.”
Emil spread his arms. “Look at me. I’m a middle-aged guy driving a Chrysler with M.D. plates. What could be more mainstream?” He dropped his hand on Steve’s shoulder and shook him slightly. “I’ll be fine. Anyone comes after me, I’ll break his head open with this fine Chardonnay.”
“Don’t you dare. That bottle’s worth more than you on the open market.”
Emil laughed as they made their good-nights. Tucking the bottle under the passenger seat of his Le Baron convertible, he considered putting the top back up. He sighed. He knew he was getting old when a couple of drunken kids yelling out of the darkness could make him this nervous. To hell with them. It wasn’t worth a twenty-minute struggle with the roof or missing fresh air blowing around him on a hot June night.
The high-Victorian architecture of the inn dwindled behind him as he drove east on Five Mile Road. He turned right onto Route 121, two country lanes bordered on one side by Millers Kill, the river that gave the town its name, and by dairy farms and cornfields on the other. In the dark of the new moon, the maples and sycamores lining the sides of the road were simply shades of gray on black, so the round outline of his headlights, picking out the violent green of the summer leaves, made him think of scuba diving in the Caribbean, black blinkers around his peripheral vision, gloom and color ahead.
Twin blurs of red and white darted into view, and for a second his mind saw coral fish. He blinked, and they resolved themselves into rear lights. Backing into the road, slewing sidewise. Christ! He slammed on his brakes and instinctively jerked the wheel to the right, knowing a heartbeat too late that was wrong, wrong, wrong as the car sawed around in a swooping tail-forward circle and crunched to a stop with a jolt that whipsawed Dvorak’s head from the steering wheel to his seat.
The smell of the Chardonnay was everywhere, sickening in its excess. Steve would kill him for breaking that bottle. His ears rang. He drew a deep breath and caught it, stopped by the ache in his chest. Contusion from the shoulder restraint. He touched the back of his neck. Probably cervical strain, as well. Behind him, some awful hip-hop nonsong thumped over a gaggle of voices. He turned off the engine. Better go see if anyone needed any medical attention before he took down the driver’s insurance and sued him into next week. The idiot.
A door thumped shut at the same time he heard the hard flat thwack of shoes or boots hitting the macadam. Glass crunched. “Look what we got!” A young man’s voice, taut with excitement. “We caught us a faggot!” Another thump, more crunching, several whoops almost drowning out the stifling beat of the bass. Dvorak’s hand froze on the door handle. The idiot. He was the idiot. He lunged for his cell phone, had the power on, and actually hit a nine and a one before the blow hit across his forearm, tumbling the phone from his grasp and making him gasp from the flaring pain. A long arm reached down to scoop the phone off the passenger seat.
There were hands on his jacket, tugging him sideways, and he watched as the cell phone arced through the edge of his headlights into the thick young corn. “Queerbait! You like to suck dick? You like little boys?” He twisted against the hands, groping for his car keys, his heart beating twice as fast as the sullen song, thinking he could still get out of this, still get away, until one of them hit him in the temple hard; supraorbital fracture, the part of him that could never stop being a doctor thought as his vision grayed and the key ring jingled out of reach.
In front of him, the headlights illuminated a swath of achingly green corn, cut off from the shoulder of the road by a sagging fence of barbed wire twisted around rough posts. His door was yanked open, and he wanted to think of Paul, to think of his children, but the only thing in his head was how the fence looked like the one on the cover of Time, like the one Matthew Shepard died on, and he was going to die now, too, and it was going to hurt more than anything.
“C’mere, faggot,” one of them said as he was dragged from his seat. And the pain began.
Chapter Two
“This stuff is going to kill us all!”
“Why are we having this meeting? This problem was supposed to have been resolved back in ’seventy-seven.”
“I want to know if my grandchildren are safe!”
The mayor of Millers Kill squeezed the microphone base as if he could choke off the rising babel with one hand. “People, please. Please! Let’s try to keep some sense of order here! I know it’s hot and I know you’re worried. Skiff and I will answer your questions the best we can. Meanwhile, sit down, raise your hand, and wait your turn.” Jim Cameron glared at his constituents until the more excitable ones grudgingly lowered themselves back into their overly warm metal folding chairs.
The Reverend Clare Fergusson, priest of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, slid sideways an inch in her own chair. She had come to her first aldermen’s meeting with the nursing director of the Millers Kill Infirmary, and though she was glad for the expert commentary, Paul Foubert was a good six four and close to three hundred pounds. Not only did he spread across his undersized chair onto hers but he also radiated heat. She pulled at her clerical collar in a useless attempt to loosen it. She was sitting next to a giant hot-water bottle on the last and stickiest night of June. In a meeting that had already gone on an hour longer than planned.
“Yes. The chair recognizes Everett Daniels.”
A gangly, balding man stood up. “Back in ’seventy-six when they started making such a flap about PCBs, we were told we didn’t have anything to worry about because we were upstream from the factories in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls where they used the stuff. Are you telling us it’s now migrating up the Hudson and into Millers Kill?”
“They did find elevated levels of PCBs in our river, Everett. Obviously, water doesn’t flow backward. But we are awful close to the core contamination sites, and our river joins up with the Hudson just a couple miles from where we’re sitting. The DEP folks don’t know yet if the stuff is coming into the Kill from the wetlands or groundwater or what.”
A woman’s voice cracked through the air. “Why don’t you tell the truth? The stuff is coming from that damn storage dump we allowed in the quarry back in nineteen seventy! And that new resort development is bringing up the chemical and letting it run straight downhill into town land!”
“Mrs. Van Alstyne, I asked that everyone raise a hand to be recognized!”
Clare jerked in her seat. The only Van Alstyne she knew in town was Russ Van Alstyne, the chief of police. His wife, Linda, was supposed to be gorgeous. Clare made a futile swipe at the damp pieces of hair that had fallen out of her twist and craned her neck for a better view.
A woman in her early seventies stood, sturdy as a fireplug and so short, her tightly permed white hair barely cleared the heads of the people sitting around her. Clare tried to see around the people sitting near the woman. She couldn’t see anyone who could be Linda Van Alstyne.
“I was saying it back in ’seventy and I’ll say it now: Allowing that PCB dump was a big mistake. They said it was airtight and leakproof and they waved a chunk of money in front of the town council until the aldermen rolled over and said yes. Then they put the blasted thing in the old shale quarry, even though a high school geology teacher, which you were at the time, Jim Cameron, could have told them shale was a highly permeable rock!” She turned her head to address her neighbors. “That means it leaks!”
“I protested against it, too, Mrs. Van Alstyne,” the mayor said.
Clare’s mental fog cleared away. That wasn’t Russ’s wife. “It’s his mother,” she said under her breath. Paul Foubert looked at her curiously. She felt her cheeks grow warmer.
“The state cleaned up that site in ’seventy-nine,” Mayor Cameron continued. “Last tests show traces of PCB in the quarry, but they’re at acceptable levels.”
“Of course they are! The blasted stuff leaked away into the bedrock. Now along comes BWI Development and gives us the same song and dance, this time promising lots of money from the tourists and lots of jobs, and what does the Planning Board do? Roll over and hand ’em a permit to start plowing and blasting over fifty acres of Landry property. It’s been three months they’ve been working, and suddenly we find PCBs in the Dewitt Elementary playground. This stuff causes cancer, and it’s in our playground!”
“Can we just stop the hysterics and stick to the facts!” An angular blond woman stood near the front row. In contrast to the Wednesday-night casual dress of the rest of the crowd, her suit was so sharply cut, it looked bulletproof. “Before we ever started construction, we had to get a permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection. It took them two years to grant it. Two years! They tested the quarry. They tested the water. They tested the damn trees, for all I know. The PCBs are at acceptable levels at the resort site. Acceptable. Levels. There may be more of the stuff in the river, but there’s no reason to act as if my property is some sort of Love Canal!”
“Damn it, Peggy, will you just wait your turn!”
She rounded on the mayor. “I came here tonight because I was told there was a motion to suspend construction due to the so-called PCB crisis.” She pointed toward the aldermen’s table. “My property was certified by the DEP. I have provided you with their environmental-impact statements, which, if you bother to read them, clearly say the development is within parameters approved by New York State. I have also provided you with copies of our zoning approval and our construction permits. Which documents you, gentlemen, issued only six months ago!”
The mayor turned away from the microphone and leaned over the wide wooden table. The four aldermen shoved in closer to hear whatever it was he was saying. They were shuffling papers like blackjack dealers. Clare nudged Paul. “Who’s the woman?” she whispered.
“Peggy Landry. She owns a huge chunk of land northwest of the town. She’s been trying to develop it for years, but she never had the wherewithal to do anything more than plow a few roads in. The only money she made off it came from paintball groups and back-to-nature nuts. You know, people who scoff at amenities like toilets, showers, or cleared land for pitching tents.” He rolled his eyes. “She got a group out of Baltimore interested in the parcel a year or so ago. Before you came. They do spas, luxury resorts, that sort of thing. It was big news at the time because of the prospect of jobs for the town, of course. I didn’t realize they had already—”
Jim Cameron straightened up. “Application papers of Landry Properties, Inc., and BWI Development, a limited partnership,” he read from a sheaf of papers in his hand. “Okay, Peggy, the town isn’t going to suspend your construction permits.” Several in the crowd yelled angrily at this. Several others cheered. The mayor frowned. “Keep it down! Look, our lawyer tells us we don’t have the authority to stop properly permitted projects unless the state rules they are, in fact, violating DEP standards.”
“What about the possible release of more contaminants by the development?” Mrs. Van Alstyne asked. “How much of that poison is stored in the rock, waiting to be let out when they start blasting? Anything they let loose is going to wash straight down the mountain and into the town and the river!”
“Who’s going to pay for the cleanup?” someone asked from the crowd. “Seems like the Landrys will be making a pretty penny and we’ll be left holding the bill.”
Jim Cameron held up his hands. “People, if we can’t stick to the rules of order, I’m calling this whole meeting off!”
A man stood up next to Peggy Landry, who was glaring at Mrs. Van Alstyne with enough venom to have caused a lesser woman to collapse back into her seat. “Mr. Mayor? May I say a few words?”
The mayor looked pathetically grateful that someone was recognizing Robert’s Rules. “Yes. The chair recognizes…”
“Bill Ingraham. BWI Development.” Cameron gestured to him to continue. Ingraham was thickly set, of middle height and middle years, with the sunburnt skin of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors. He looked more like a plumbing contractor than the developer of a luxury spa to Clare’s eye, but then, she had never really met any luxury-spa developers. “My partner and I—stand up, John, and let the folks here get a look at you.” A smartly dressed corporate type stood, waved unenthusiastically, and vanished back into his seat. “John and I are here to create a new resort, the best cross between the old Adirondack mountain retreats and an up-to-the-minute health spa. We want to build this because we think it’ll make us a whole lot of money.” There was a snort of laughter, quickly stifled, from the crowd. “I also think it’ll make your town a whole lot of money, because we see this as a destination resort, not a place to stay overnight while your visitor heads over to Saratoga during the day. This is gonna mean money spent in your town and jobs for people who live here, year-round jobs, because this is gonna be a year-round resort.” There was a scattering of applause across the town hall. “John and I are putting our money where our mouth is in more ways than one. We’re sponsoring the Fourth of July road race this year, and we’ve got plans for a ski meet at one of the local mountains this winter. Eventually, we want to support a special event in each of the four seasons.” He rubbed his hands together theatrically. “Give those tourists a little incentive to get into town and loosen their purse strings.”
There was even more laughter than there had been applause. Ingraham paused for a moment, then went on. “I like this area. Don’t want to see it polluted any more than you do. And I’ll be frank with you. Our budget for the Algonquin Waters Resort and Spa does not include the costs of coming into compliance with the DEP. We had a run-in with them once before, when we were cocontractors on a Georgia project that had PCB contamination. We’re still paying folks to dig sludge down there. It was a total loss. Now, we bought into this project based on the work Peggy had already done with the permits. So here’s how we’re gonna handle it. If you all want to call in the state to retest our site because PCB levels have been rising several miles away, go ahead. But if the ruling goes against us, we’re shutting down. In my experience, once the government gets its teeth into things, it doesn’t let go until you’ve gotten a spot cleaner than it ever was originally. We don’t have the time or money to spend the next ten years chasing down stray leaks.”
“What?” Peggy Landry turned to Ingraham, clutching his arm. “You can’t—” The rest of what she had to say was lost as she sat down, hauling him down with her.
“Huh. It’ll certainly spoil her plans if the deal falls through,” Paul said. He shook his head. “Being an Adirondack land baron just isn’t what it used to be.” Throughout the room, rule-abiding citizens waved their hands in the air and rule-ignoring ones called out questions.
Out of the corner of her eye, Clare caught the movement of the big double door swinging open. A tall man in a brown-and-tan uniform slipped through. He paused by the door, unobtrusive despite his size, and scanned the crowd. Clare quickly looked back at the front of the room, where a redhead in a nurse’s jacket was talking about the health effects of PCBs. Clare had seen Russ Van Alstyne rarely, and mostly from a distance, since last December, when they had first struck up a friendship while unraveling the mystery surrounding an infant abandoned on the steps of St. Alban’s. It had been so easy to talk and laugh and just be herself with him, without worrying about that man-woman thing, because, after all, he was married. Very married, as she had told her church secretary. It still smarted that she had been so completely unaware of her own emotions all the while. She had been Saul on the road to Damascus, oblivious until a moment’s revelation struck her and she realized she had fallen for him but good. It was embarrassing, that’s what it was. It was embarrassing and something she was going to get over.
When Clare glanced back at him, he was looking straight at her. Even from across the room, she could see the summer-sky blue of his eyes glinting beneath his glasses. Her face heated up as he continued to look at her, his thin lips quirking into something like a smile. She pasted a pleasant expression on her face and gave him a small wave. He glanced next to her, frowned, and then looked back at her. He pointed and mouthed something. What? She shrugged. He pointed again, more emphatically. She raised her eyebrows and jerked a thumb toward Paul Foubert, who was absorbed in whatever the nurse was saying. Russ nodded.
“I think Russ Van Alstyne wants to speak with you,” she said.
“Hmm? The chief? Where? I didn’t know he was at this meeting.”
“He wasn’t. Wednesday’s his regular patrol night. He’s just come in.”
“You know his schedule?” Paul looked at her, bemused.
“I’m good with schedules. Natural gift. Go on.”
Paul rose with a groan. “Probably one of the Alzheimer’s patients wandered off again.”
Clare resisted the urge to follow the nursing home director, although she was unable to keep herself from swiveling around to see what was happening. Russ looked serious. Grim. Washed-out beneath the fluorescent lights, despite his tan. He removed his steel-rimmed glasses when Paul reached him, then took hold of the larger man’s shoulder, drawing him close. A thread of unease coiled through Clare’s stomach, then tightened sickeningly as Paul abruptly twisted away from Russ and sagged against the wall.
By the time Russ caught her eye again, she was out of her chair and excusing herself as she made her way down the crowded aisle. He urgently jerked his head in a summons. Paul was leaning on the town-hall bulletin board, his face turned toward a pink paper announcing summer dump hours, his huge fists clenched and shaking.
“What is it?” she said quietly. “What’s wrong?”
“Emil,” Paul said. “Attacked.”
She looked up at Russ. “I don’t think I’ve met Emil before.”
He put his glasses on. “Emil Dvorak. Our medical examiner.” His thin lips flattened. “A friend of mine. He was found a while ago on Route One Twenty-one. Looks like his car hit something and went off the road.” Russ pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “He was attacked. Beaten bad. He’s in the Glens Falls Hospital right now.” He tilted his head toward Paul. “Emil is Paul’s, um, friend.”
“Dear God.” Clare pressed her hand against Paul’s shoulder, then moved closer, draping her other arm across his back. “Oh, Paul, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” She had known Paul lived with someone, but he had never mentioned anyone by name in their conversations at the nursing home. She looked at Russ. “We came to the meeting together. I’ll take him to the hospital.”
“I can get there. I’m okay,” Paul said in a reedy voice, an oddly small sound coming from such a big man. Clare’s heart ached. He straightened up and looked around as if he had never seen the town hall before.
“No. Clare’s right. You shouldn’t try to drive, Paul.” Russ ran his hand through his shaggy brown hair. “I have to stop at the station.” He looked down at Clare. “Can you find the Glens Falls Hospital?” She nodded. “Okay, I’ll meet you there.”
Russ held the door open for them as Clare steered Paul out of the meeting room. Despite the hot air rolling off the street below, she shivered as she caught Russ’s last, whispered direction: “Hurry.”
Chapter Three
The whirling red lights of Russ’s squad car made a strobe effect with the blazing blue ambulance lights as he pulled into the emergency bay at the Glens Falls Hospital. He parked in the spot marked RESERVED FOR POLICE and left the relative cool of his cruiser for the oppressive weight of an impending thunderstorm. He strode across the blacktop and was almost to the ER’s doors when they hissed open and Clare tumbled out, hair flying away from her knot, her face drawn so that her high cheekbones and sharp nose stood out in stark relief. Her mouth opened when she saw him.
“It’s you. Thank heavens.” She grabbed the sleeve of his uniform and dragged him away from the doors. “It’s bad. They’re prepping Dr. Dvorak for a life flight to Albany.”
“Jesum. They couldn’t transfer him by ambulance?”
“No. Brain trauma. I couldn’t understand half of what the doctor was saying to Paul, but from what I gathered, every minute counts. It was awful in there, Russ. They weren’t going to let Paul go in the helicopter because he wasn’t a spouse or a blood relative. What a stupid, bureaucratic waste of time….” She pulled a hank of hair off her neck, twisted it viciously, and shoved it back into her knot. “Paul is just…well, you can imagine. Oh, I got so mad. I told them if he couldn’t go in their helicopter I would rent one and fly him myself. Jackasses.”
Russ grinned in spite of himself. “Can you afford to rent a helicopter?”
“No.” She looked up at him and grinned back. “But I think they were so taken aback at the idea of the flying priest that it inspired them to come up with another solution. Turns out Paul and Emil have medical power of attorney for each other, and we got a copy faxed over from the Washington County Hospital.” She glanced back at the ER’s doors. “I’ve got to go get the car. He’s going to be ready to transport in just a minute, and I’m driving Paul. They land the helo at the West Glens Falls fire station’s parking lot, and I haven’t the faintest idea where that is. If I don’t follow the ambulance, I’ll get lost for sure.” She laid her hand on his forearm. “You will come, won’t you?”
He had a bizarre urge to take her hand in both of his and kiss it. He squelched the notion, nodding instead. “Yeah. Absolutely. You get your car and I’ll follow you.” She flashed him another smile and jogged off toward the parking lot, her long black skirt flapping around her ankles. How the hell did she manage to be so damn pleasant and open and normal, when he felt like a seventeen-year-old around her? Ever since he had crossed that line last December, he had pretty much avoided her, on the theory that his feelings must be middle-aged idiocy and absence would make the heart grow indifferent. It hadn’t worked that he could tell. Spotting her in the park, running into her at the IGA, or even driving past the rectory made his chest squeeze and the back of his throat ache. Maybe this would be better, to go on as friends, ignoring that other thing. Hell, maybe if he acted normal, he’d come to feel normal, too.
A blast of noise and movement swung his attention back to the entrance to the ER. Two EMTs, a doctor, and a nurse were moving a gurney in a carefully controlled frenzy through the bay, heading toward the open doors of the waiting ambulance. Between the bodies surrounding him, Russ could catch glimpses of Emil’s face. He winced. Christ. “Careful! Keep those lines clear!” the doctor said, levering himself into the ambulance as the EMTs maneuvered Emil, strapped to a spine board, from the gurney to the ambulance bed. The nurse passed over the IV bag she was holding above her head and scrambled up into her seat.
The doors into the ER hissed open again and Paul emerged, accompanied by another nurse. On his face was the look Russ knew from Vietnam—the face of someone who has just seen his buddy blown away beside him. A mix of shock, fear, and terrible comprehension. “Paul!” he called out. The oversized man looked up. “Clare’s gone to get her car. I’ll follow you to the airport.” Paul nodded, as if speech was too much of an effort right then.
One EMT had finished strapping Emil in and was jumping out of the back of the ambulance when Clare screeched in behind the wheel of her little white-and-red Shelby Cobra. She waved to Paul, who lumbered over and squeezed himself into the tiny passenger seat. The EMT slammed and sealed the door and dashed to the cab of the ambulance. It began moving before the cab door had swung shut.
Russ and the ambulance both kept their lights flashing all the way to the fire station. He couldn’t shake the image of Emil’s ground-meat face. They had never been more than professional friends—he had precious few real friends for someone who had come back to his hometown, Russ realized—but in the five years he had headed up the department, he had spent a lot of time with Emil Dvorak—in the ME’s office, at the hospital, in courthouse hallways. He thought about the pathologist’s razor-sharp wit, his orderly office, full of thick books and opera CDs, his addiction to Sunday-morning political debates. The damage to that fragile brain when Emil’s skull had been pounded again and again—bile rose in Russ’s throat, threatening to choke him. He followed the ambulance across the intersection and into the fire station’s parking lot. Lights blazed from the station bays, burnishing the garaged fire trucks and emergency vehicles, glittering off the blaze-reflective strips on the life-flight helicopter, which was hunkered down in the middle of the asphalt. Several firefighters stood inside their bays, watching. He followed Clare’s car to the farthest corner of the lot, where the firefighters’ cars were parked.
The life-flight team—a paramedic, a nurse, and a pilot—jogged over to the ambulance to help the EMTs off-load Emil on his spine board. Clare leaped from her driver’s seat and paused while Paul wriggled his way out of the passenger side. Russ joined them, a little apart from the medical team, which was carefully transferring Emil into the helicopter.
“Paul,” he said, “I wanted to ask you—what was Emil doing tonight?” One of the nurses hoisted the IV high as they smoothly lifted the board into the belly of the chopper. “Do you know where he was? Who he was with?”
Paul kept his gaze fixed on the figure disappearing into the helicopter. He rubbed his hands up and down, up and down along the seam of his shorts. “He had dinner with some friends of ours. Stephen Obrowski and Ron Handler. At their bed-and-breakfast, the Stuyvesant Inn. He was going to come straight home….” his voice trailed off.
“Okay. Thanks. I’ll be talking with them tomorrow. We’re going to get whoever did this.” Russ knew that was cold comfort when measured against Emil’s broken body in the helicopter. Paul looked at him, his eyes wide and red-rimmed.
“Paul,” Clare said, “it’s time. The pilot’s going to warm up the engines now.”
The pilot had been tying down straps by the door and didn’t look as if he was headed for the cockpit, but Clare was the one who had flown these monsters in the army, not Russ, so he walked with them to the open door. Sure enough, the pilot disappeared, and a second later, he heard the unpleasant whine of turbines kicking in.
Paul stepped forward. Stopped. “The dogs,” he said to Clare. “Did I ask you about taking care of the dogs?”
“You did.” She rubbed his arm. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll collect them and take them to the kennel. Don’t worry about them.”
“C’mon, sir,” the paramedic said, jumping from the chopper. “Time to go.” He held out a helmet to Paul and helped the big man strap it on correctly, then pointed out the stepping bar and straps where Paul could climb up into an empty jump seat. The IV bag trembled where it hung from a hook in the ceiling and the flight suit–clad nurse bent over Emil to adjust something.
Paul turned toward Clare, his brown hair and beard sticking out improbably from beneath the helmet. “Clare,” he said too loudly, “I’ve never been one for religion, but Emil is Catholic…he was…”
Clare stepped close and spoke directly to his face, enabling Paul to see her lips moving, an aid to hearing inside the bulky helmet. “I’ll pray for him,” she said in a normal tone of voice. “I’ll pray for both of you.” She squeezed his hand. “Don’t be afraid or embarrassed to reach out to God the Comforter if you feel the urge. You can always go back to being an agnostic after Emil is well. I won’t tell on you.”
“Sir, we have to go!” The EMT beckoned Paul urgently. Paul hoisted himself into the belly of the chopper as Clare and Russ backed away. Above them, the rotors began to circle slowly, then faster and faster, until the hard-edged chop of the blades challenged the turbines’ whine. Clare stopped in front of the nose of the ambulance. The hair fallen from her knot danced in the updraft, strands the color of honey, caramel, and maple syrup. Russ was caught by the look on her face.
“You miss this, don’t you?” he yelled over the noise. She shrugged, never taking her eyes from the helicopter. He could feel the vibrations through the soles of his shoes. Looking inside the cockpit, he saw the outline of the pilot, dimmed and warped behind the reflective smoke-colored Plexiglas. The beat of the rotors increased to a sound he still heard sometimes in nightmares. And then the skids left the ground, bumped, rose, hovering half a foot off the parking lot, and the chopper was away, its fat insect body rising smoothly and improbably into the darkness over Glens Falls.
They both looked up into the sky. A freshening wind sprang up, and from the mountains Russ could hear a distant rumble. “Is it safe for them to fly with a storm coming on?” he asked her.
“Mmm. They’re headed south, in front of the leading edge. They’ll stay ahead of it with no problem.” Another gust sent a scrap of paper skittering across the asphalt. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“I hate helicopters,” he said.
She looked at him with surprise. Over her shoulder, there was a tapping from the ambulance windshield and the driver leaned out of his window. “Would you folks mind stepping out of the way? I’ve got to get back to the hospital. My shift’s just starting.”
Russ and Clare retreated to their parked cars. Russ waved as the ambulance pulled away.
“You hate helicopters, the machines, or you hate riding in them?” Clare asked, crossing her arms over her wilted black blouse.
“I don’t know. Both, I guess. I had a bad experience in one.” His brain caught up with his eyeballs. “Shit! I wanted to talk to the doctor! ’Scuse my French.”
“I was listening while he spoke with Paul. I think I got the gist of things. Dr. Dvorak has a lot of fractured ribs, a fractured skull, internal bleeding…. It sounds like someone kicked the crap out of him.” She glanced up at him. “Excuse my French. What happened to him? Why on earth would anyone try to murder the county’s pathologist?”
He shook his head. “That may be it right there. He’s been our medical examiner for ten years now. I don’t think he was ever involved in a capital case, but I’m sure he’s had a hand in sending lots of men to Comstock. Maybe he gave evidence against someone’s brother or buddy. Maybe someone he put away has been released without managing to rehabilitate himself into a model citizen.”
Clare glowered at him. “Don’t start in with that. If we made more services available to support prisoners—” She huffed and waved her hands. “Never mind. That scenario seems a little far-fetched. I mean, suppose you were this guy, just released and slavering for vengeance?”
“ ‘Slavering’?”
She ignored him. “Would you go after the medical examiner who gave some of the evidence first? Or would you go after the prosecuting attorney, or the arresting officers, or even your own attorney first?”
“Well, you know how I feel about lawyers. I’d definitely go for them first.” She whacked his arm. “No, I know. Point well taken. There’s another possibility. His car was in an accident, not bad enough to cause his injuries, but enough to give everyone involved a good smack. Maybe the other driver went ballistic. Cut loose on him.”
“Road rage run amok?”
“It happens.”
She worried her lower lip. “Could it have been personal? Someone he knew?”
He nodded. “In most assaults and homicides, the victim and the perpetrator know each other. That’s why I asked Paul about where Emil had been.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know. There are too many possibilities right now. I don’t like that. The only thing we know for sure is that the vehicle he hit was red. We got some paint scraping on his left-front fender.”
“We know he wasn’t robbed.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“One of the nurses gave Paul Dr. Dvorak’s belongings—clothes and stuff. He had a very expensive watch and a wallet full of credit cards. Untouched.”
“I almost wish he had been robbed. We’re going to have some good prints off Emil’s car, but they’re not going to do us any good if whoever did this hasn’t been arrested before.” Thunder rumbled, closer and louder than before. He glanced up. Heavy clouds had moved in, their under-bellies reflecting a faint sodium glow from the lights of Glens Falls. “Time to go. You can follow me back to Millers Kill if you need to.”
She reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out her keys. “I need to.” He watched her get into that ridiculous mosquito of a car. Another impractical sports car, and a convertible to boot. He shook his head. She had slipped, slid, and stuck in her old MG last winter, finally wrecking the thing trying to drive through a snowstorm on Tenant’s Mountain. He had assumed that would have taught her to buy a sensible four-wheel-drive vehicle. He had assumed wrong.
As he climbed into his cruiser, it struck him that he didn’t feel like a hormonal teenager anymore. He felt…pleasant. Friendly. He had enjoyed Clare’s company without making an idiot of himself. He reached for the mike to let dispatch know his destination. He was going to work out this friendship thing after all.
Chapter Four
Thursday morning, Clare woke early with the sound of helicopter rotors in her mind. She ran through the tree-lined streets of her neighborhood as the sun was rising, looping east to return along Route 117, parallel to Riverside Park and the abandoned nineteenth-century mills. A short run on Thursdays, so she could shower and be ready for the 7:00A.M. weekday service of Morning Prayer. It was one of her favorites: cheerful and intimate, with the same five or six faces showing up regularly. Since Memorial Day weekend a month back, the size of her Sunday-morning congregation had dropped like a stone through water. She was lucky if she saw thirty faces at the ten o’clock Eucharist. But she could rely on her Morning Prayer people, and no matter how much turmoil she brought with her, she always found her center in the orderly succession of prayers, psalms, and canticles.
Today, though, she was seized by the thought of Paul and Dr. Dvorak as she and her tiny congregation read the Second Song of Isaiah, the Quaerite Dominum. “ ‘Let the wicked forsake their ways and the evil ones their thoughts; And let them turn to the Lord, and He will have compassion….’” Paul’s broken, lost expression. Dvorak’s still form at the eye of a whirlwind of activity. “ ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, says the Lord.’ ” She tried to imagine what would lead someone to stomp an unoffending man half to death. It seemed infinitely more vicious, more personally hateful than that American classic, murder by cheap gun. “ ‘So is my word that goes forth from my mouth; it will not return to me empty….’” Sometime during her once-a-week visits to the Millers Kill infirmary, Paul had become her friend, one of the very few people in Millers Kill who didn’t look at her and stop when they got to her collar. A man who spent his days caring for the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. His world had collapsed in the space of a few minutes because of—what? Careless malice? Cool calculation? An explosion of anger? “ ‘But it will accomplish that which I have purposed, and prosper in that for which I sent it.” She wanted to know. She wanted to know why. And who. Was it a monster? She didn’t believe in monsters. She believed in redemption. But some days, it was awfully hard.
After the service, she checked the calendar. Two premarital counseling sessions today and another three next week. Whoever said Generation X was not interested in marriage hadn’t been looking in the Adirondack region. And the MacPherson-Engals wedding rehearsal Friday evening. She underlined that. She left a note for Lois, the church secretary, asking her to contact the organist, and another for the sexton, reminding him to unlock the door by eight o’clock Saturday morning to give the florist time to arrange the wedding flowers. Then she dashed back to the rectory next door and changed into an outfit that compromised between the weather and her customary clerical uniform: a long, loose-fitting shift in black linen, with a collar attached by hand.
Outside, it was promising to be another ninety-degree day, but the storm last night had cleared the air. The light, dry breeze reminded Clare of the best sort of weather at her parents’ home in southern Virginia. She had dropped the top of her convertible, and once she had taken care of Paul’s dogs, she might have time for a little spin through the countryside before the first of her two counseling sessions that afternoon.
The first hitch in her plans came when she got to Emil and Paul’s handsome old farmhouse. For some reason, she had pictured little dogs, Jack Russells or toy poodles perhaps. The pair that bounded out of the attached barn were big. Really big. Big, hairy, bouncing, barking black-and-white Bernese mountain dogs. She turned around and looked at the minuscule backseat, which would have been a snug fit for Jack Russells. She looked back at the dogs, which were excitedly tearing along the limits of an invisible fence. “Oh…shoot,” she said.
The dogs were ecstatic at meeting her. As she crossed from the driveway onto the lawn, they leapt and wiggled against her, pawing at her ankle-length dress and frantically licking at her hands. “Not exactly standoffish, are you?” she said. They discovered her sandal-clad feet and immediately began licking her toes. “Stop!” she shrieked. “Sit!” They plunked down, looking up at her hopefully, their tails thumping hard against the grass. She fished for their collar tags among handfuls of silky hair. “Okay, Gal and… Bob?” The dogs thumped more energetically. “Who names a dog Bob?” She sighed. When he had mentioned the dogs while they were waiting in the emergency room, Paul had said their bowls and leashes were in the barn. “C’mon, then,” she said. “Let’s get your things. Then we’ll try to fit you into my car.”
She wound up squeezing Gal, who was the slightly smaller of the two, across the backseat, the dog’s head out one side of the car and her tail out the other. Bob sat in the passenger seat, his dinner plate–size paws precariously balanced on the very edge of the smooth leather. Clare’s trunk lid barely shut over leashes, bowls, fifty pounds of dog chow, and an assortment of squeaky toys the dogs had brought and dropped in her way while she was loading the car.
The second hitch came at the Clover Kennels. “I’m sorry, Reverend Fergusson,” the plump, blonde owner said. She vigorously scratched the dogs’ heads. “All of our big dog runs are booked up through next week. It’s the Fourth of July weekend, and lots of folks are traveling.” She crouched, running Gal’s floppy ears through her hands and kissing her nose. “And we can’t fit these two into anything smaller. You wouldn’t be able to move, would you, you sweet thing?” She looked up regretfully at Clare. “There are a couple kennels over to Saratoga, of course, but I’d call first before going over. It’s going to be hard to find any spaces this weekend. Maybe some friends could watch them?”
And so Clare found herself taking her spin through the countryside with two hundred pounds of dog packed in the car. The only friends of Paul and Emil she knew of were the two Paul had mentioned last night, the owners of the Stuyvesant Inn. Maybe they would take the dogs off her hands. Bed-and-breakfasts were supposed to have cats or dogs hanging around.
The road to the inn ran along the river—what the early Dutch settlers had called a “kill”—through green shade and sunlight. Falling away from the water, it climbed westward through lush fields of tender-leaved corn and grazing pastures landscaped by Holsteins and Herefords, grass as trim and tight as a broadloom carpet, set off by lichen-mottled rocks and bouquets of thistles and wildflowers. The road rose and dipped, rose and dipped, until it came to a high spot and Clare saw the exuberantly painted inn, a well-maintained fantasy of Carpenter Gothic, with mauve and coral and aqua trimmings. Behind the inn, perennial beds and ornamental trees gave way to a meadow that rolled over the top of a hill and was surmounted by the first in a series of mountains, sea green and smoky in the morning sun. She pulled into the semicircular drive and was not surprised to see a Millers Kill police car already parked in the shade of one of the massive maples sheltering the dooryard.
She had barely pulled the key from the ignition when the dogs bounded out, Gal squashing Clare’s shoulder as she squeezed herself from the narrow backseat and over the door. They snuffled around the cars, the trees, and the neatly edged bed of annuals before relieving themselves against an iron hitching post and the rear tire of the squad car. “Gal! Bob! Come!” They fell in behind her as she climbed up to the wide porch and rang the doorbell.
The mahogany door opened a moment later, revealing a gray-haired man with a face as pleasantly rumpled as an unmade bed. “Hello, can I—Why, Bob! And Gal! Hi there!” The dogs abandoned Clare to butt their heads against the man’s knees. “Come in, come in,” he said, trying to scratch the dogs’ heads and offer his hand to Clare at the same time. “I’m Stephen Obrowski.” He swung the door wider and stepped back into a wide hallway papered in velvet flock and furnished with chairs and tables that were so ugly, she knew they must be authentic Victoriana.
The dogs pushed past Obrowski, their toenails clicking on the polished wooden floor. “Thank you. I’m Clare Fergusson, the rector at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church.” She reflexively fingered the clerical collar attached to the neckline of her shift, then noticed that the linen dress now resembled mohair, with great quantities of white dog hair sticking out every which way.
“Please, come on back to the kitchen. We were just talking with Chief Van Alstyne about last night. Poor Emil. It’s unbelievable. You read about these things, but when it’s someone you know…”
Clare followed him down the long hallway, through an alcove formed by a spindle-banistered stairway, and into a kitchen that was mercifully not true to the period. Russ was standing next to a stainless-steel cooking island, polishing his glasses with a tissue. He looked up as they came in, eyes vague and out of focus. An attractive man in his mid-thirties was pouring coffee into chunky ceramic mugs. He had the look of a German skier—lean, tan, blond. She wouldn’t be surprised if his name was Hans or Ulf. “This is Ronald Handler, chef extraordinaire. Ron, this is the Reverend Clare Fergusson. And I take it you two know each other?” he said, looking at Russ.
Russ replaced his glasses and tucked the tissue in his pocket. “Yup. What brings you out here, Reverend?”
Before she could open her mouth, the dogs muscled open the door and swarmed into the kitchen, tails whipping like rubber hoses, tongues hanging, mouths drooling. Ron Handler stepped to a curtained door tucked away to the left of a large commercial range. “Gal! Bob! Out!” He opened the door and the Berns galloped out into the sunshine.
“Bob?” Russ said.
“Coffee?” Handler offered, tilting the pot toward Clare.
“Please. So have you found anything new? Do you know what happened last night?”
Obrowski picked up his mug and blew across the steaming surface. “We were just telling the chief. We had a small dinner party last night—just us, Emil, Samuel Marx, and Rick Profitt. Samuel and Rick are staying with us. They’re up from New York City.”
Handler handed Clare a mug. “They own a travel agency. They send us a ton of business.”
“We put it together very spontaneously, because it was a free night in what’s otherwise a pretty busy season for us. I don’t see how anyone who might have been intending to hurt Emil could have known about it.”
Russ shifted his weight. “Your other guests, Marx and Profitt. Did they know Emil beforehand?”
“No,” Obrowski said. “And they both retired before Emil left. They didn’t even realize we had had a drive-by.”
“Maybe Chief Van Alstyne thinks they shimmied down the drainpipe in the rear and went after Emil while we were distracted washing up,” Ron said. “Like in one of those British murder mysteries on PBS.”
Russ ignored this and continued looking at Obrowski. “Anyone else invited who didn’t show? Did you tell any vendors, any delivery people?”
“No. No need. Ron can throw together a five-star meal out of whatever we have in stock.” Stephen Obrowski swept his hand toward the chef, who bowed. “We had invited Paul, of course, and our other guest, Bill Ingraham, but they both had to attend the aldermen’s meeting instead.”
“Bill Ingraham?” Clare said. “The developer?”
“That’s right. He’s been staying with us at least once a month since this winter.” Obrowski pointed at a mullioned window centered over a stainless-steel sink framing a view of the mountains. “The Landry property, where he’s working, starts about a mile west of us. As a matter of fact, this house used to be the Landry mansion. The family made their fortune in logging and real estate speculation. Archibald Landry built his own railroad line into Adirondack Park to transport timber and holidaymakers, but the connecting lines that other developers were supposed to build never came through, so his track just petered out in the wilderness.” Obrowski took a sip of coffee. “Then a son died in World War One. When the stock market collapsed, it took most of the family money with it. They sold this place in the thirties.”
“So this guy Ingraham, he’s the one who’s building the new hotel?”
“Luxury spa,” Obrowski corrected. “Very exciting. It’s going to bring in lots of people, lots of money. Lots of traffic past our door.”
“And he couldn’t make it to your dinner last night.”
“He was definitely at the meeting,” Clare said. “There was quite a to-do about PCBs in the area maybe coming from the old quarry on the Landry property. He stood up and told everyone what a good thing the spa was going to be, but he said that he wouldn’t be building it if the town called in the DEP for another go-round.”
“You’re kidding! That would be a disaster. Let’s hope they don’t jump the gun and call in the DEP prematurely. Lots of people are counting on that resort going forward.”
“Not the least of whom is that Landry woman.” Handler rolled his eyes.
“Oh, cut it out. She’s not that bad.”
“Joan Crawford on hormone-replacement therapy.”
Russ snickered. Clare pressed her lips together, trying not to smile. “How about his partner?” she asked. “Did he stay here, too?”
Handler and Obrowski glanced at each other. “Well…” Obrowski said.
“He used to,” Handler said.
Obrowski sighed. “They had a big blowup here at the end of May. The kind where Ron and I try to disappear into the woodwork for the duration. We haven’t seen him since then.”
Clare put her mug down. “But he was at the meeting last night. Mr. Ingraham introduced him.”
“He did what?” Handler goggled at her.
“Wait. Wait.” Obrowski laughed. “Slightly chunky guy with lots of slicked-back dark hair?”
“Yes, that’s the one. John something.”
“Opperman. John Opperman.” Obrowski grinned at Handler. “She meant his business partner.”
“We thought you were referring to the Queen of Tarts,” Handler said.
“His girlfriend?”
“His boyfriend.”
Russ started. “Ingraham’s gay?”
Handler grinned, showing his pointed eyeteeth. “We’re everywhere. Scary, isn’t it?”
“Cut it out, Ron,” Obrowski said.
Russ’s cheeks grew pink beneath his tan. “Did Ingraham know Emil?”
“No, not to my knowledge. He hasn’t been one for socializing,” Obrowski said. “When he stays here, he spends most of his time meeting with subcontractors and tramping around the woods, plotting out the resort and directing what construction they’ve already started—cutting down trees, plowing roads, that sort of thing. Opperman, his business partner”—he tilted his head toward Clare—“handles the paperwork. He’s been up frequently, too, but he stays at one of those concrete-cube chain hotels along the Northway.”
“I keep telling you, Steve, if we put up some bad art and wall-to-wall carpeting, we could get that trade, too.”
“Ron…”
“Maybe if you put in an ice machine down the hall?” Clare offered. Handler looked delighted.
Russ cleared his throat. “Okay, it’s unlikely anyone knew Emil was going to be here last night. Which leaves the possibility we were discussing earlier.”
Obrowski looked down into his coffee cup. Handler’s dazzling smile disappeared, replaced by a wary look in his eyes.
“What?” Clare said. “What?”
“When we were walking Emil out, there was a drive-by.” Stephen Obrowski’s amiable voice turned hard. “A truck with a bunch of rednecks shouting a lot of homophobic crap. They’ve been by before a few times, but the worst that’s happened so far is a few beer cans chucked on the lawn.”
“And they continued east toward Route One Twenty-one?” Russ asked.
“We asked him if he wanted to wait. I was worried about him heading in the same direction as the pickup.” Obrowski shook his head. “I wish to God I had insisted. If he had waited until the police arrived, we wouldn’t be standing here having this conversation.”
Clare looked at Russ.
“They called in a report right after,” he said. “We had an officer up to Cossayuharie who came down to check things out. It was when he was headed back into town that he found Emil’s car.”
“You think it was a hate crime?” Clare put down her coffee mug. “Somebody beat him half to death because he’s gay?”
“It’s not like it hasn’t happened before,” Handler said.
“They might not have even known Emil was gay.” Obrowski turned toward his partner. “He might have been attacked because he was leaving our inn. Have you thought about that?”
Russ held up his hands. “Let’s not speculate too wildly here. We—and by ‘we,’ I mean law enforcement and the business community—want to be real careful not to start unsubstantiated rumors about a bunch of punks targeting gay-owned businesses. I also don’t want to be telling one and all that that this was a gay-bashing episode.”
Ron Handler looked outraged. “We’re supposed to ignore the fact that we might be killed because of who we are? That our friends and customers might be in danger? That’s—”
“That’s not what I said.” Russ took off his glasses and rubbed them against the front of his shirt, the steel edge clinking faintly when it tapped the badge over his breast pocket. “If you call something a hate crime, you glamorize it. You make assault or vandalism sound like a political statement, and political statements have a way of attracting imitators. I’ve seen it happen. There’s big play in the newspaper about somebody painting a swastika on a bridge, and next thing you know, every asshole in the county with a can of spray paint and pretensions of grandeur is doing the same thing. ’Scuse my French.”
“But that’s different from what happened to Emil,” Clare protested. “It may be vile, but painting a swastika isn’t kicking someone into a bloody pulp.”
“No, it’s not. But right now, our only pieces of evidence are a scrape of red paint on Emil’s car and the fact that a pickup truck drove by here a half an hour or so before he was attacked. We can’t take those facts and label them a hate crime.”
“You don’t have to confirm that what happened to Emil Dvorak was definitely a hate crime,” Clare said. “But you’ve got to warn the community that it might be repeated. That another gay man might be attacked. If people know that their friends and neighbors might be at risk, you have a better chance of preventing copycat crimes before they happen.”
“Clare, you’ve got a real uplifting view of humanity, but let’s not kid ourselves. If word gets around that someone in Millers Kill might be going after homosexuals, it’s more likely to scare everyone away from associating with the potential victims. Let law enforcement take care of this quietly by finding these jerks and slinging their butts in jail. I promise you, that’ll get the message across.”
“The chief is right,” Obrowski said. “Bad publicity, even for a good cause, can kill a business, especially one like ours, which relies on word of mouth.”
“So we cower quietly in the closet and wait for the big bad police to save us? Until the next time it happens?” Handler flung his hands over his head and looked at Clare.
“Ron is right,” Clare said. “I come from the South, and I can tell you that sitting quietly and not making a fuss didn’t do diddly to stop black folks from being vandalized, assaulted, or even killed. It wasn’t until those crimes were held up to the light of day that things changed.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Russ said. “We’re not talking about lynch mobs and Jim Crow laws. It’s assault and battery, not a civil rights issue.”
“Isn’t it?” Handler said.
“What’s a more basic right than the right not to be attacked because of who you are?” Clare said.
“Thank you, Reverend King,” Russ said. He looked at Stephen. “Look, I’ve gotten all I need—” A torrent of barking, both deep and high-pitched, erupted from behind the kitchen door, cutting him off. “What the hell?” he said.
Chapter Five
“The rat pack is back,” Ron said. He held out a hand for Russ’s empty mug and thrust it into the sink, twisting the tap on full force.
“We have five Pekingese,” Stephen explained over the noise of dogs and running water. “They like to make their rounds in the morning. They were out back in the barn, herding hens. Now it’s time for a mid-morning snack; then they all retire to the music room for a nap. They all share one big basket.” He walked to the outside door.
Stephen’s deliberate high-pitched cheerfulness was the adult version of a kid clapping his hands over his ears, humming, and saying, “I can’t hear you!” Clare crossed her arms tightly and exhaled. Ron rolled his eyes and collected the three remaining mugs with a great deal of clattering. Russ opened his mouth, glanced at Clare, and snapped it shut.
“I ought to get going,” he said. “Thank you both for your cooperation. I’ll, uh, keep you updated.”
Clare took a deep, calming breath. “I didn’t even get a chance to tell you why I came,” she said to Stephen, who was body-blocking the two enormous Berns at the doorway while what looked like a walking carpet swarmed into the kitchen. “I was hoping you two could keep Gal and Bob here at the inn while Paul is in Albany.” It was awkward, talking about him as if he were away on a business trip, but she had a strong feeling Stephen didn’t want to be reminded of why the dogs were temporary orphans. “The kennel is full up, and the owner said it wasn’t likely I’d find—”
“I wish we could,” Stephen said. “The Berns are lovely dogs. But having them and our five would be way too much.”
“Too much hair, too much barking, and too much missing food,” Ron added, taking a box of kibble off a shelf and shaking it into five tiny stainless-steel dog bowls squared against the wall.
“They’re very well-behaved dogs,” Stephen said, frowning at his partner. He took a firm hold on each Bern’s collar and marched them toward the hall door, ignoring their whining and longing looks at the kibble. “I’m sure you won’t have any difficulty finding someone to take them in. Or leave them at Paul and Emil’s. Someone can drop by once a day with fresh food and water.” Clare raised a finger and started to speak. “Not us, unfortunately,” Stephen said quickly. “It is our high season, after all. But surely someone can.”
No good deed ever goes unpunished. Her grandmother loved that saying. Clare mustered a smile and followed Stephen and the Berns through the front hall to the porch. “It was very nice to meet you, Reverend Fergusson,” Ron called after her, emphasizing the you. Stephen released the dogs, who galloped to her car and scrabbled over the sides into their former places, leaving visible scratches on the paint.
“See?” Stephen said. “Good dogs.”
The porch creaked under the weight of Russ’s step. He paused beside her to shake Stephen’s hand. “We’ll keep an eye on your place,” he said. “If you see anything that makes you itchy, anything at all, call nine-one-one.”
Stephen nodded. “You can count on that.” He took Clare’s hand in both of his. “Come back and see us again, Reverend Fergusson. Bring the dogs for a visit.”
Clare and Russ trudged down the porch steps in silence. When she reached her car door, she paused. Stephen Obrowski had disappeared into the inn. Russ had gone to the cruiser and was leaning against the driver’s side, his hand resting on the open window. He fished into his pocket and pulled out sunglasses, which he clipped over his glasses. It gave him an aura of faceless authority, like every lawman in every movie since Cool Hand Luke, and even though they were only clip-ons and should have made him look like a middle-aged tourist, she started to get mad again. She opened her mouth to speak, but Russ beat her to it.
“Before you start in again on how wrong and insensitive I am, let me tell you that I know a place where you can board those two monsters.” He flipped the shades up, as if they were little plastic-topped visors, and her incipient tirade turned into a laugh. He removed his glasses and looked at them. “Pretty sharp, huh?” He wiggled the shades. “Prescription bifocal sunglasses are not covered by my health plan. Got these at the Rexall. Six bucks.”
“They look it.” She glanced at the dogs, who were panting enthusiastically, tongues lolling. “All right, I’ll bite. Where can I board these puppies? The county jail? Your house?”
“Sorry, no. Linda is not a pet person. We’ll take ’em to my mother’s place.”
She looked at the dogs again. She hadn’t seen much of Russ’s mother at the town meeting, but she was willing to bet Gal and Bob outweighed her by at least seventy-five pounds. “Are you sure?” Bob shook his head and saliva sprayed over the windshield of the Shelby. “Wouldn’t they do better in the care of some tall, hefty guy named Spud?”
“Trust me. Inside, my mom is a tall, hefty guy named Spud.” He put his glasses on and flipped the shades down. “Follow me.”
“This means I’m going to have to drive the speed limit, doesn’t it?”
He grinned.
They drove back across the river and onto Old Route 100, turning away from Millers Kill and heading north into the mountains. The trees crowded in against the edges of the road, which swooped, twisted, and climbed steeply enough to make Clare’s ears pop. It would be a great place for a long, hard run, cool in the shade of the trees and undisturbed by much traffic. Of course, if she were to twist her ankle, she’d have a long way to go for help. There wasn’t even the occasional dirt drive or mailbox signaling human habitation. She was beginning to think Russ’s mother must be either a hermit or a squirrel, but then the forest cover broke apart, and they were at an intersection that might have passed for a tiny town. Strung along the two-lane highway were several sagging Victorian cottages that escaped dilapidation through creative paintwork and an abundance of flower baskets. There was one road leading off to the left, squared by a two-pump gas station, a general store, an antique shop, and an art gallery.
Russ turned. The battered green sign read OLD SACANDAGA ROAD, and Clare wondered if any of the roads in northeastern New York State were new. Less than a hundred feet down the road, Russ turned right into what was either a very small dirt parking lot or a very wide grassy driveway. She pulled in beside his cruiser and got out.
“Good heavens,” she said. “Someone shrank Tara!” They were parked next to a perfect Greek Revival mansion in miniature, deeply shaded by towering pines. Tiny second-story windows peeped from underneath a pediment upheld by square columns. More windows ran along the white clapboarded side of the house, each one framed with forest green shutters. “This looks like an oversized playhouse. Is this where you grew up?”
“Nah, my old house is a museum now.” She rolled her eyes at him. “No, really!” He laughed. “The people who bought it from my mom sold it to an enterprising couple who turned it into a museum of Indian art. With a gift shop. Actually, the gift shop is bigger than the museum part.”
A former school bus, now painted purple and topped with several large rubber rafts, rattled past. HUDSON RAFTING EXPEDITIONS, its hand-painted sign read. The dogs flailed their way out of Clare’s car and went into high alert, racing around in circles and barking.
“Bob! Gal! No! Bad dogs!” Clare lunged after them, but they stopped at the sidewalk of their own accord. Across the street was another antique store and a small Presbyterian church that appeared to have been made out of river boulders. The town ended there, sheared off by a leafy-treed gorge. The Old Sacandaga Road crossed a bridge and disappeared into dense forest.
“That’s the Hudson down there,” Russ said, joining her. “Fast and shallow at this point. There’re a lot of rafting companies putting in around here.”
“Is it going to be safe for the dogs?”
“Sure.” He pointed to the edge of the drive. “Behind those lilac bushes, there’s a good strong chain-link fence. I helped Mom put it up myself. And if it turns out these two like chasing cars, she’s got a nice fenced yard out back. Mom’s used to taking in strays—of every sort. C’mon, I’ll introduce you.”
He walked toward a white-and-green carriage house set well back from the drive, then vanished between two pines. “Mom?” He reappeared. “She’s not out back.” He gestured to Clare. “Come on in.” He stepped up to a green kitchen door set near the rear of the house and held it open. She climbed the steps, solid blocks of dense gray stone, and went in at his heels.
“Mom?”
Clare could hear a muffled voice from upstairs. “Is that you, sweetie? I’ll be right down.” The kitchen was cluttered with cooking utensils and shopping bags, and a basket of laundry sat atop a washing machine jammed in the corner. Signs demanding STOP THE DREDGING! jostled library books and stacks of papers on an oilcloth-covered table. An Amnesty International calendar was tacked to a door, and the ancient refrigerator was plastered with bumper stickers exhorting readers to work for peace, seek economic justice, and vote for Hillary Clinton.
“Mom’s an old lefty peacenik,” Russ explained. “A real tax-and-spend Democrat, just like you.”
“I heard that.” Russ’s mother appeared in the doorway, looking even more like a fireplug this time in baggy red shorts and a red T-shirt. She reached up and tugged her son’s ears, bringing his face down close enough to kiss. “Remember, my taxes pay your salary, sonny boy.”
“Then I want a raise. Mom, this is Clare Fergusson. Clare, this is my mom.”
Russ’s mother had a firm, no-nonsense handshake. Clare wasn’t surprised. “How do you do, Mrs. Van Alstyne.”
“Call me Margy.” She waved in the direction of Clare’s collar. “Now, what’s that? You a minister?”
“A priest. I’m the rector of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Millers Kill.”
“Well!” Margy Van Alstyne smiled, revealing teeth so uniform, they must have been dentures. “It’s about time! A woman priest. Are there many of you?”
“Quite a few, actually. The Episcopal church started ordaining women in 1976. When I graduated from seminary last year, close to half my class were women.”
“Don’t that beat all! You always want to be a priest? You look to be a few good years out of high school, if you know what I mean.”
“Mom…”
Clare suppressed a smile. “I just turned thirty-five. And no, my call came later, as it does for a lot of people. I was an army pilot before I went into the seminary.”
“So you worked for the war industry but came to your senses!” She darted a glance at her son. “What rank were you?”
“I was a captain when I resigned.”
“Ha!” Margy Van Alstyne’s elbow caught Russ in the solar plexus. “She outranks you, son! Finally, a woman who can boss you around!”
“Every woman in my life bosses me around,” he muttered, rubbing his stomach.
Clare started to laugh.
“You don’t do crafts, do you? Make little things with yarn and twigs? Sew a lot?”
“No, ma’am. I don’t know how to sew. I like to cook, though.”
“Cooking’s okay. I hate crafts. You can’t walk into a person’s house today without tripping over handwoven baskets and rag dolls covering up toilet paper or some such nonsense. I like you.” She turned to her son. “I like her.”
“I thought you would.”
“So what are you doing here? You just come out to introduce me to this nice young lady? Or you after something?”
“I’m after something. Did you ever meet Emil Dvorak, our medical examiner?” Margy shook her head. “He’s kind of a friend of mine. Last night, someone beat him up pretty bad. He was airlifted down to Albany.”
“Good Lord.” Margy pressed her fingers flat against her lips. “You catch who did it?”
“Not yet. I will.” Russ replied. Margy nodded. “Anyway, his, um, roommate went down with him, and they left behind two dogs. Clare’s helping them out by trying to find a place to board the beasts.” He crossed to the door and opened it. Bob and Gal, lying in the shade of one of the pines, looked up. Their tails began thumping as Clare and Margy walked out.
“I hate to impose,” Clare said. “When I told Paul I’d see to the dogs, I thought I’d simply have them boarded for a few days. But the kennel I spoke with said there’s no room because of the holiday weekend.” She couldn’t keep a pleading look off her face. “I’d keep them at the rectory with me, but I have an unfenced yard on a fairly busy street. They’d have to be indoors unless I was there. And I keep weird hours.”
“Well, don’t they look sweet.” Margy clapped her hands and the Berns rose, shook off pine needles and grass clippings, and trotted over. “Of course I’ll have ’em here. What are their names?”
“Gal and Bob. They’re Bernese mountain dogs.”
The dogs snuffled at Margy’s hands. “Bob? Who names a dog Bob?”
“That’s what I thought. I’ve got their bowls and toys and a sack of food in my trunk.”
“Russ can fetch those. Russell?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He held out his hand to Clare. “Keys?”
“Oh, it’s unlocked.”
He shook his head. “Of course. Of course it is.”
“He thinks I should be more careful about locking up the rectory and my car,” Clare explained as Russ toted the fifty-pound sack of dog chow into the backyard.
“He’s prob’ly right. He usually is about these things.”
“I know. I guess I just feel that if someone is desperate enough to steal what I might have, he needs it more than I do anyway.”
The dogs frisked around Russ, trying to snatch the toys out of his arms. He flung them into the backyard, and Bob and Gal fell onto the rubber bones and squeaky ducks with abandon. He dusted off his hands and returned to the stone steps. “I’m on duty, Mom, so I’d better be heading back. I’ll see you at the parade on Sunday. Got roped into driving the squad car again this year.” He looked at Clare. “You want to follow me into town?”
His mother grabbed his ears again and kissed him. “Don’t be a stranger, sweetie. And keep yourself safe! There’re a lot of crazies out on a holiday weekend.”
“Don’t I know it. Bye, Mom. Thanks.”
“Thank you so much for looking after the dogs, Mrs.—Margy. Please give me a call if you need me to sit them or take them for a while. I’m in the phone book.” She extended her hand, only to be pulled off balance by Mrs. Van Alstyne’s hug. “I don’t shake hands,” Margy said. “I like to give folks a squeeze.” The old woman felt plump and sturdy and smelled of Elizabeth Arden’s Blue Grass powder. “I’ll have Russ bring you up here for dinner sometime soon. You can cook.”
Clare laughed. “Okay, we’ll do that.”
As Clare slid behind the Shelby’s steering wheel, Margy disappeared around the back. She could hear a cacophony of joyous barking. “Your mom’s really something. Not quite what I expected.”
Russ leaned against the door of his cruiser, facing her. “Mom’s like the Spanish Inquisition in that old Monty Python skit.”
“ ‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!’ ” they both quoted. He laughed.
“I really am grateful to her. Now I can tell Paul the dogs are well taken care of.”
“You gonna call him?”
“I’m not sure how to reach him. I gave him my number and asked him to call me. Of course, I haven’t heard anything yet.”
“Well, the hospital should update me on the situation at some point. I’ll let you know what’s happening.”
“Why would the hospital…” He watched her as the answer came to her. “Oh. If Emil dies, it’ll be a murder investigation.” He jerked his chin in assent. She compressed her lips for a moment, and they both fell silent. Finally, she asked, “Do you have any leads?”
“Not any worth jack-all. We lifted prints but didn’t get any matches. Paint flakes that are the most common red used by Chevrolet. Our best bet right now is finding a red Chevy vehicle that’s recently gotten some damage. I’ve got Noble checking out all the area body shops and auto-parts stores this morning.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. It’s not like Law & Order—we don’t always find the bad guy before the second commercial.”
“Russ…” She paused. “What if Ron Handler was right? What if it is a hate crime?”
“I sure as hell hope it isn’t.” He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know the real difference between an ordinary assault, if I can call it that, and a hate crime? The ordinary perpetrator is beating up on an individual. He’s mad, he acts on his feelings, and then he’s done with it. The perp attacking a victim because of the group he’s in…” He sighed. “He might not stop until he’s run out of people to hate.”
Chapter Six
“Okay, so you won’t forget that you’re going to pick up the candles and bring them over to Mom and Dad’s house.”
“I thought I was supposed to take them to the church.”
“No, Todd, you’re driving Aunt Sue and Uncle Bill to the church, and you’ve got to be there no later than eleven-thirty! You’ve got to have those candles at Mom and Dad’s in time for the florist to pick them up to take them to the church!”
“How come I can’t just take them to the florist’s and—” A rising screech cut him off. “Never mind. Never mind. I’ll have the candles to Mom by seven o’clock.”
“In the morning.”
“Of course in the morning! You know, there wasn’t nearly this much fuss when Tim got married. All I had to do was find a jacket and get there on time.”
“That’s because Tim’s a man. I’ve been dreaming about this day ever since I was a little girl! Everything is going to be perfect. It’s going to be a total fantasy come true.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what Princess Di thought.”
“Todd! That’s awful!” Her voice softened. “Someday you’ll meet someone—you know, someone special—and you’ll understand.”
“Yeah? Well…maybe. Look, I gotta run. It’s almost closing time, and the store’s a mess.”
“I love you, Oddball.”
“I love you, too, Fish Face. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“With the candles!”
“With the candles.”
Todd MacPherson understood the power of fantasy. He had viewed every single one of the movies for sale or rent in his video store, and, just like when he was a kid, they still had the power to sweep him away into another world, where people were better-looking, danger was an aphrodisiac, and problems could be solved in a two-hour running time.
His own problems were more intractable. As he methodically reshelved the returns and straightened racks jumbled by the usual Friday-evening rush of renters, he considered where he was going after closing up shop. Supposing, that is, he didn’t just crawl home and collapse in front of the tube. There was a little hole-in-the-wall bar in Hudson Falls, but he knew every guy who would be there on a Friday night, and he couldn’t stomach the thought of the same complaints and conversations he had heard a hundred times before. There was a bigger, more open place in Saratoga, where he might see some new faces, but that meant a forty-minute drive each way, an awfully late night when he had to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed the next morning for Trisha’s wedding. And to be perfectly honest with himself, he had never yet come up lucky there. The guys who paired off there were lean and tan and knew how to wear sweaters tied around their shoulders, if they looked rich, or military gear, if they looked sexy. Todd’s wardrobe consisted of jeans that bagged in the wrong way and T-shirts sporting old movie posters and film festival schedules.
He wiped a dusty copy of The Green Berets on his jeans and reshelved it in the John Wayne section. His best friend, Janine, had moved to New York City four years ago, after getting an associate’s degree at Adirondack Community College. Now she was working as a gofer in Rockefeller Center, hanging lights for Off-Off-Broadway productions, and taking the occasional film class at NYU. Every weekend, she called and ordered him to get the hell out of Millers Kill and come share an apartment with her. They had both been teens from another planet in high school, completely unable to fit in with the kids around them. They’d been alternately tormented and ignored because if it. But now Janine had a whole circle of friends and was dating some aspiring playwright, while he was still a geek—a celibate geek.
He picked up a copy of Truly Madly Deeply off the floor and examined Alan Rickman’s face. He thought he sort of resembled Alan Rickman, younger, of course, and with longer hair. Those snotty Saratoga summer boys just never got close enough to notice. He tossed the video in his hand. Maybe he wouldn’t go out anywhere. Maybe he’d stay a little late and put together an Alan Rickman display on his film-festival shelf.
The bell over the door tinkled, and he heard blended voices, yelping laughter. Sounded like Nintendo customers, here to pick up a weekend’s worth of bloody shoot-outs and pneumatically breasted women. That was the crux of his problem, the store. He had sunk so much time and money into it, and it was starting to do good business. Better than good. He had turned a profit the last two years. The loan officer at his bank loved him. How was he supposed to chuck it all on the chance that he might find something better in the city? What if he never found anything better? What if this was as good as it got?
“Hey, man, you got any Jujubes?”
Todd shelved Truly Madly Deeply under T and slid through the narrow aisle to the checkout counter. Two guys his own age lounged in front of the candy display, one of them leafing through this month’s Cinemagic magazine. They wore low-slung, wide-legged jeans cropped at the shins and backward-facing baseball caps, which made them look, in Todd’s opinion, like morons. “Didn’t see any there?” He glanced at the rack. “Hang on—I got some more in the back. If you guys are checking anything out, Friday’s our three-for-two special. Rent any two, get the third for free. Limit on one new release only.”
The Jujube guy grinned. “Hell yes, we’re checking something out.” He swaggered toward Todd, leading with his pelvis, looking him up and down. It was an overt, exaggeratedly sexual gesture, which made the hair on the back of Todd’s neck rise. He licked his upper lip and glanced at the other guy, who still leaned against the counter, flipping the magazine’s pages, opening and closing the cover so that Patrick Stewart appeared and disappeared between flashes of the other guy’s smirking face. Todd had been beaten up too many times in high school not to recognize what these guys wanted.
“We heard you got something special in the back room,” Jujube guy said. He was close enough that Todd could feel the heat and excitement radiating off his body. “Some special movies.”
Patrick Stewart appeared and disappeared, his face grave. Todd thought he might be saying that he should beam the hell out of this scene.
“Like those old gladiator flicks,” the guy with the magazine said. “Except for grown-ups.”
“So, whaddaya say?” Jujube guy reached both arms over his head and cracked his back. “Gonna show us some of that gay-bo porn? I always wondered how guys do guys.”
“I’d rather see chicks on chicks myself,” the other guy said.
“That ain’t gay, asshole. You can see that in any porn flick. You’re missin’ the point.”
Todd backed away slowly, keeping his trembling arms relaxed, forcing his face into an unalarmed expression. He thought he might throw up at any moment. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t carry any X-rated stock. There’s a convenience store outside Fort Henry that rents videos; they have a small selection.” If he could get to the back room, he could lock the door and call the cops. “Let me grab you those Jujubes and I can show you the address in the phone—” His words were choked off as an arm circled around his neck, clamping him tightly against an unseen chest. Oh, sweet God, there had been a third one in the store and he hadn’t even realized. He flailed against the man behind him, kicking backward, clawing at his head.
“Ow! Help me with this pussy, you assholes!”
Jujube guy punched Todd in the stomach, and he lunched forward, retching. The man behind him let go of his neck, clenching his hair in a fist and twisting one arm behind his back. Todd cried out. His wrist was forced higher, wrenching every joint in his arm. Todd bowed forward, straining on tiptoe to loosen the grip that was forcing his muscles and tendons to their limits, but the fist in his hair held him tightly against his invisible tormentor as he vibrated between pain and pain. “I got money in my cash register,” he said, his voice reedy and desperate. “Please, just take it. Take whatever you want and go. Please.” The last word cracked.
Todd felt a hard tug as his hair was yanked upward once, twice. “You really got me there with some of those kicks, pussy,” the unseen man behind him said. “Now I gotta hurt you bad.”
“Hey, man, let’s get the money. It’s no fancy electronic safe system or nothing. He’s probably got a wad of cash in there.”
“Shut up,” the man behind Todd said. “You know the deal. Nothin’ gets taken.”
“How’s he gonna know?”
“No. Now put the goddamn magazine down and help me with this fag.”
The last thing Todd thought, in the moment before all his thoughts were wiped away, was how businesslike they sounded. Like in Pulp Fiction. Nothing personal. Nothing personal. Nothing—
Chapter Seven
In her dream, Clare was floating in an inner tube on an emerald green pond. It was kind of like her special place in the woods near her parents’ home, except the water was bathtub-warm and there was much more open sky above her, the light dazzling through her closed eyelids. The tube spun slowly, her hair and feet trailing through the water, and then a man surfaced at her side and she saw with delight that it was Russ Van Alstyne. He floated close, smiling, and then his hands were running along her body, warm and liquid as the water. She noticed that she was naked. How wonderful. A car alarm went off on the distant shore, but she ignored it, watching his face and his hands, flowing from relaxation into a sweet tension. The car alarm was louder, annoying her. She worried that it might be her car. She fought to focus on the tingling sensations in her body, but the shrill was too…damn…loud. She woke with a sideways lurch across her bed, the phone ringing on her nightstand, sunshine splashing over her tangled sheets.
“Good Lord,” she said. She could feel her cheeks coloring. She took a deep breath and snagged the phone. “Hello?”
“Reverend Fergusson?” It sounded like a girl, trying not to cry.
“Yeah. I mean, yes, this is Clare Fergusson.”
“It’s me, Trisha MacPherson.” MacPherson. As in MacPherson and Engels, the celebration of Holy Matrimony, twelve o’clock this afternoon. “I’m afraid…I’m afraid we’re going to have to cancel the wedding.” The girl’s voice was choked with tears. Clare rubbed her eyes and tried to focus. Trisha’s fiancé must have dumped her. During their three sessions of premarital counseling, Clare had thought he looked shifty. A little too eager to please. The weasel.
“Trisha, I’m so sorry.” Clare sat up in bed, pulling herself away from the green, green pond and into the here and now. “I know it seems like the end of the world at this moment, but when someone breaks off an engagement, it’s a realistic reflection that they’re not ready to—”
“Nobody broke off the engagement!” Outrage tightened Trisha MacPherson’s voice. “Kurt is here with me right now. It’s my brother Todd. He was beaten up last night. He was hurt very…”
Trisha’s voice was replaced by a young man’s. “Reverend Fergusson?”
Clare was wide-awake now, the floating world drowned in cold shock. “Kurtis? What’s up?”
“Trish’s brother Todd was assaulted in his video store last night. His brother Tim went looking for him this morning when we couldn’t raise him at home…found him unconscious and called an ambulance. We’re all at the Glens Falls Hospital right now.”
“How is he doing?”
“It’s pretty bad. They’re taking him in right now for a ruptured spleen. There may be kidney and liver damage, too.”
Clare tilted her clock toward her. Eight-thirty. “I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”
“Oh, thanks, Reverend. I know Trish’s family aren’t churchgoers, but I think they could use…we could all use some extra…” he foundered. “Thanks.”
There are no agnostics in foxholes, she thought after hanging up, and I’m meeting a lot of folks in foxholes lately. She had to call the sexton and the organist to let them know the wedding was off, have someone at the church to help guests who wouldn’t hear the news in time, tell the florist—oh, no, no wedding flowers meant someone on the floral committee would have to whip up a quick arrangement for Sunday…. Despite the whirl of practical details, she couldn’t keep from wondering: Was it a terrible coincidence that Millers Kill had seen two violent attacks in the space of two days? Or was there some connection between Trisha’s brother’s assault and what had happened to Emil Dvorak?
The surgery waiting room was full of anxious MacPhersons. The bride-to-be was curled up on a sofa in the corner, clutching her mother’s hands. The groom rubbed the back of his fiancée’s neck, while the father of the bride sat four-square and straight-backed, leafing through a two-year-old copy of Field & Stream. Half of the low artificial-leather chairs were occupied by people Clare had seen yesterday evening at the rehearsal. Some were watching a CNN anchor report on a possible pilots’ strike; others were paging restlessly through magazines. The best man stood with his back to the wall-mounted television, talking into a cell phone in a low voice. Everyone looked up as Clare entered, then let out a collective breath of relief or disappointment.
Clare crossed to Trisha and her family, expressed her condolences, and sat down to listen to whatever they needed to say. She again heard from Kurt how Todd had been found unconscious in his store earlier that morning. Trish told Clare about her brother’s errand to deliver candles. She heard about what a sweet, inoffensive, good boy he was from Mrs. MacPherson. Mr. MacPherson grunted something about a shotgun being better than insurance. She approached the brother who’d found Todd, a soft-spoken young man named Tim, who kept glancing worriedly at his obviously pregnant wife. Clare had to draw his story out in a backward spiral, first talking about canceling the caterer, then about speaking with the police at the scene, and finally about finding his brother’s battered body. “I can’t tell them,” he said, looking at his parents and sister. “They only saw him prepped for surgery, cleaned up and covered by sheets.” His eyes teared up. “But, oh God, I can’t stop thinking about what he looked like.”
After an hour or so, a doctor came in with a report from the surgical team. They had removed Todd’s spleen. His liver was undamaged. There might be a problem with his kidney functions later on, but they would simply have to wait and see. They were closing up now and the surgeon would come in with more news soon. Yes, there was no question he would survive—he was young and healthy and should make a good recovery.
The atmosphere lightened after that, and when the door opened again, everyone looked up with expressions of bright expectation, but instead of a surgeon, they saw a cop. His short-sleeved uniform shirt was tucked into jeans, and he was wearing sneakers instead of shiny brown shoes. Clare guessed she was the only person in the room who knew he was normally off duty on Saturday morning. He caught sight of her and raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Mr. and Mrs. MacPherson? I’m Russ Van Alstyne, the chief of police.”
Todd’s parents stood up, Mrs. MacPherson clinging to her husband’s arm. “You find the bastards who did this?” Mr. MacPherson asked. “It was a robbery, wasn’t it? I told that boy he needed real protection. Cash business like that. Bound to attract attention.”
“We don’t know who assaulted your son yet, sir. We’ve taken prints, and hopefully that will lead us somewhere. One of my officers is interviewing neighboring business owners to find out if anyone saw anything.” He looked around. “Is Tim MacPherson here? The one who found him?”
The brother stepped forward. “That’s me, sir.”
“You use a key to get into the store?”
“No, sir. The lights were off and the CLOSED sign was hanging on the door, but the door was unlocked. I told the officer who showed up after I called.”
Russ nodded. “That’s what he said. Just checking. Sometimes people remember more after they’ve had a chance to get over the initial shock.” He took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It doesn’t appear to have been a robbery. The till is full of cash and credit-card slips. It looks like whoever assaulted Todd either grabbed him outside before he had a chance to lock the door or did it inside the store and turned off the lights before leaving.” He replaced his glasses. “We found a ring of keys hanging on a hook in the back of a shelf beneath the cash register.”
“That’s where Todd kept his keys,” Trisha said. “I spoke with him on the phone maybe ten minutes before ten. He said something about cleaning up the mess in the store.”
“I’m thinking if someone got to him while he was locking the door, they wouldn’t have put his keys away in exactly the right place,” Russ said. “I think whoever did this went into the store, maybe right at closing time, and I think they were looking for Todd.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Do any of you know of anyone who might have wanted to hurt him?”
The MacPhersons looked at one another. Something moved between them, a message or a collective memory. “No,” Tim said. “Not really.”
“Not really?”
“Well…” Mrs. MacPherson hesitated. “Todd used to have trouble back when he was in school. He was one of those kids who attracts the attention of bullies. He got beaten up a few times. We reported—I reported every instance to the principal. Some kids got suspended as a result.”
“For Chrissakes, Cathy, he finished school six years ago. Todd’s a grown man now. Nobody’s going to go after him because his Mommy got them suspended.” Mr. MacPherson shook his wife’s arm free. “Goddamn it, none of this would have happened if he had learned how to defend himself like I wanted. If you hadn’t stopped me from teaching him how to fight—”
“Dad, Todd was never going to be like that.” Tim’s even voice sharpened to a hard point. “Give it a rest.”
Russ glanced at Clare, then back at the family. “Is Todd gay?”
“No!” Mr. MacPherson said immediately.
There was another collective moment. Mrs. MacPherson glanced at her husband. “Yes,” she said. Russ looked at Trisha and Tim. They both nodded.
Russ exhaled. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Do you think that’s it? That’s the reason Todd was hurt? Because he’s…” Mrs. MacPherson pressed her lips together in a tight line. Her eyes filled with tears.
“There was no theft, no vandalism…. Did Todd sell drugs? Smuggle cigarettes from Canada? Was he a heavy bettor?”
“No!” Mrs. MacPherson said. “Todd’s not like that. He works incredibly hard at his store. He’s doing a lot better than so many people his age.”
Tim shifted and scratched the back of his neck. “He did, you know, smoke pot sometimes.” He shrugged at his mother’s expression. “Sorry, Mom, but he did.”
“Smoking a few joints isn’t what I had in mind.” Russ’s eyes flickered toward Clare, and she caught a glimpse of amusement before he looked back at the MacPhersons. “We’re going to investigate every possible angle in order to find out who did this, then put them away for a good long time. Mrs. MacPherson, if you and your kids could give me a list of those boys who were expelled back when Todd was in school, I’d appreciate it.”
He pulled out a small notebook and pen from his shirt pocket. Mrs. MacPherson pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Well, there was Andy Poccala.” She looked at her other children as if for confirmation. Tim and Trisha nodded. Clare slipped away while Russ collected what information he could from the MacPhersons.
Mr. MacPherson was standing, his shoulders rolled forward in the posture of a usually erect man too tired to stand straight. He was staring with apparent fascination at a CNN reporter interviewing a movie star who was gushing with happiness over her new—and fifth—husband.
Clare drifted next to Mr. MacPherson and came to a parade rest, staring at the screen. “We are totally in love!” the improbably youthful actress was saying. “I’m so totally happy!” Clare waited.
“Your church,” Mr. MacPherson said suddenly. “Do they do anything to help boys like Todd. Any programs?”
“Help him? How?”
“You know. When a boy is confused. Help him see that he can be a perfectly normal man. It’s all conditioning; that’s what I’ve read. You just have to help them make the right connections.” He broke his gaze away from the television screen and looked at Clare. His eyes had a desperate quality to them. “I know he could stop being…that way if he just had some support. Like AA.” He shot a bitter look at the rest of his family, who were clustered around Russ. “They’re no help.”
Clare took a moment before answering. “I have heard of those programs. Attempting to convert homosexuals to heterosexuality. St. Alban’s—and the Episcopal church in general—doesn’t do anything like that, no. And from what I understand, the groups that do have a very poor long-term success rate.” She touched his sleeve lightly. “I do believe there’s a much higher level of success in support groups that help parents come to grips with their kids’ sexual orientations.”
His eyes sparked, hot and hard. “He’s just had the crap beaten out of him because of what he is. Why the hell should I accept that?”
“Because he’s just had the crap beaten out of him for being what he is. If he could have changed himself, don’t you think he would have?”
“I just want my kid to be normal. Is that so bad? They can fix anything in your head these days, between the drugs and the therapy. Why not fix this?”
“Mr. MacPherson,” she said, “what sort of counseling or drug could make you turn from a heterosexual to a homosexual?”
He looked at her, and she could see that she hadn’t reached him at all. She sighed and turned back to where Russ was finishing up with the other MacPhersons. He reached into his pocket and pulled out three business cards. “If you think of anything, even if you’re not sure it has any relationship, even if you think we already know it, give us a call.” He gestured toward the door. “I’m going to be back later, when Todd is awake. I’ll interview him. If we’re lucky, he’ll be able to identify his attackers, and all the rest of this will be moot. I’ll see you all then.” He shook hands with Mrs. MacPherson and Tim. “Thanks for all your cooperation. Reverend Fergusson, can I see you outside for a moment?”
As soon as the door to the waiting room closed behind them, they turned to each other. “What are you doing here?” Russ said.
“Why didn’t you tell them about Emil Dvorak?” Clare asked at the same time.
“I didn’t—” he began as she said, “They were—” They both took a breath.
“Why don’t you—” they both said.
Russ put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a small shake. “You first. Why are you here with Todd MacPherson’s family? Do you know him?”
“I was supposed to marry his sister, Trisha MacPherson, and Kurt Engels this afternoon.”
“Ouch. That’s gotta be tough. Do they belong to your church?”
“No. I didn’t know them before I did their premarital counseling. If you want to get married in Millers Kill in a beautiful old church, your choices are St. Alban’s, First Presbyterian, or High Street Baptist. Dr. McFeely at First Presbyterian wants engaged couples to have some connection to his parish, and Reverend Inman wants to be assured they haven’t been sleeping together before the ceremony. So I do a pretty brisk business. My turn. Why didn’t you tell them this is the second episode of gay-bashing in four days?”
“Because my thinking hasn’t changed on this. I don’t want to start rumors that someone is going around attacking gays, or gay-owned businesses.”
“That is completely irresponsible! You can’t possibly believe that this is a coincidence!” Her voice rose on the last word. He took her upper arm and dragged her a few steps down the hallway, away from the waiting room.
“I don’t believe in coincidence. But starting a panic about who might or might not be next in line for a visit from the heterosexual hit men isn’t going to serve any purpose other than to scare a lot of people and give the town a bad name.”
“It could alert potential victims to take precautions. It could bring in more information to help you find the perps.” He gave her a one-sided smile. She ignored it. “It could tell people to keep their eyes on gay-owned businesses for suspicious activities. If Todd MacPherson had known there was a chance he was going to be attacked because of his sexual orientation, there’s a good chance we’d all be getting ready for a wedding right now, instead of waiting for him to get out of surgery.” She tucked her hair behind her ears.
“One,” he said, counting off on his fingers, “there wasn’t any pattern of attacks until after MacPherson was beaten up. So there wasn’t anything for him to know. Two, we’ve already briefed the Post-Star on Emil’s attack. Our take was that an area doctor was rammed and mugged while he was out driving in his convertible. We asked for anyone with information on a red vehicle with new damage to the body to call us.”
“That makes it sound like he was robbed. If people read the words doctor and convertible, ninety-nine percent of them are going to assume he was rich.”
“Fine. I don’t mind scaring rich people. They already take precautions against attack.” He ticked off a third finger. “Three, like I said when we were at the inn, if word gets out that someone might be targeting gay-owned operations, it’s likely to cost the owners business. Even if there are good-hearted neighbors around to keep watch, customers are going to stay away. It’s my job to protect Millers Kill and Fort Henry and Cossayuharie. Some businesses make half their yearly income between Memorial and Labor Day. I’m not going to hurt them if I can help it.”
She leaned against the smooth, cool wall. “Now you sound like the mayor in Jaws. Don’t yell ‘shark,’ ’cause it’ll hurt business.”
“If I thought I could catch who’s responsible for these attacks by closing down the town, I would. But singling out certain businesses or individuals and telling them they may be next won’t do that.”
“But you might prevent another person from being hurt!”
“Look, the take on MacPherson’s attack is going to be that a small-business owner, closing up all alone, was assaulted. There’s going to be a statement from me in the Post-Star urging all businesses to take extra precautions at closing time. The population around here doubles in the summer, and God knows what sort of lowlifes come floating in for the carny rides in Lake George and the fake rodeos in Lake Luzerne.”
“Is that who you think is behind this? Some rednecks from out of town, up here for a little fresh mountain air and blood sports?”
He sighed. “It could be. The timing certainly suggests so.” He pushed his hand through his hair, causing it to fall unevenly across his forehead. “If it is, it should be easier to spot the red vehicle. You can’t just garage your car and drive another one when you’re on vacation.”
“Russ, I can understand your concern about singling out businesses as potential trouble spots. And I can understand you not wanting Millers Kill to be associated with this sort of vicious behavior. But if you don’t let it be known that you believe gays are being targeted, you’re keeping individuals from being able to protect themselves.”
“I’m keeping them from being singled out. This is a small town, Clare. How many homosexuals do you think are out of the closet here? Every guy with a high voice and every woman with cropped hair and no makeup will suddenly be a source of speculation. Or worse, a potential target for any homophobe reading the paper who thinks, ‘That’s a good idea! I’m gonna get me a faggot!’ ” He leaned against the wall. “Let them stay safely hidden.”
“That’s bull.”
He straightened up and looked at her, raising his eyebrows. “What?”
“You heard me. Bull. It’s that sort of attitude that allows homophobia to flourish. ‘They’re different. They’re not like us. We don’t know any. Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ ” She pushed away from the wall and pulled her hair back in both hands, twisting it. “I saw the same sort of crap in the army. Force people to hide who and what they are and then act surprised that you’ve created a culture where it’s okay to make fag jokes and harass people who act ‘funny.’ How do you convince Joe Six-Pack that being gay’s not a fate worse than death when it is a fate worse than death if you’re found out?”
“Clare, I’m trying to solve a pair of assault cases here. I’m sorry, but eradicating prejudice and stupidity are beyond the scope of my job. As is reforming the U.S. Army.”
She exhaled. “I’m not asking you to do that. Sometimes I get a little…global when a problem gets under my skin.” She glanced up at him. “I still think you’re making a mistake.”
“I respect your opinion. But this is a real short chain of command here. I’m the cop and you’re the priest, and what I say goes. Period. I want you to promise me that you aren’t going to run to the Post-Star or preach your next sermon on the possible connection between Emil and MacPherson.”
She frowned and crossed her arms.
“Promise me—”
“All right. I promise. But I swear, if there’s one more incident, I’m going to organize a Take Back the Night march and start it right at the front steps of the police station.”
“Don’t worry. If there’s one more incident, the press is going to be all over this like a hog on slop, and then everybody will be weighing in with their opinion.” He pushed away from the wall and began strolling toward the elevator doors at the end of the surgery unit. Clare fell into step beside him. “However,” he added, “there’s not going to be another incident if I can help it. Every man on the force, full-or part-time, is on duty this weekend.”
“Is that because of these assaults, or because it’s the Fourth?”
“Everyone’s usually on duty for at least part of the Fourth. The road race tomorrow will suck up a lot of manpower. Then there are parties and barbecues…. Ican guarantee you that before the fireworks go off, we’ll have handled a dozen domestic fights, three car accidents, at least one kid doing something incredibly stupid with a bottle rocket, and somebody who’s gotten drunk and fallen into the Kill.” He stopped at the elevators. “You coming or staying?”
“I’m staying with the family until Todd’s out of surgery.”
He punched the down button. “Every one of my men is gonna be briefed on this and on the alert for anything suspicious. Not to mention looking for a red vehicle with impact damage.”
The elevator chimed. The door opened and Russ entered, waving a half salute at Clare.
“Speaking of prejudice,” she said.
“Huh?” He caught the edge of the door before it closed.
“How come there aren’t any women on the police force?”
The last thing she saw of him were his eyes, rolling back in his head.
Chapter Eight
“Great day for a race, huh, Chief? Gosh, I love the Fourth of July.”
Russ looked over at Kevin Flynn, who was standing with his hands on his hips beside their cruiser, eyeing the crowd of runners and spectators filling the park. Then he looked up, where heavy-bellied clouds dragged over the mountains and sailed low under a silvery gray sky. He reached through the window to retrieve his windbreaker. “At least we won’t have to worry about sunstroke,” he said.
A cluster of woman runners walked by him, evidently not worried about the day’s unseasonably cool temperatures. They were wearing what looked like neon-colored body paint and shoes that must have cost more than his first car. “Whatever happened to running in baggy shorts and T-shirts?” he asked Kevin.
The juniormost officer was grinning at a trio of giggling girls. Russ pegged them as coeds who had been hiking on the Appalachian Trail, from their chunky boots and serious backpacks. “Huh?” he said without turning away from the girls.
“Never mind. Just wondering when Lycra became the national fabric.” On the other hand, he thought, his attention riveted by one woman bending way over to retie her laces, there was something to be said for Lycra. He hadn’t seen that much of Linda until after they were married.
The radio crackled inside the cruiser. “Fifteen fifty-seven, this is Dispatch.” Harlene, their most experienced dispatcher, had volunteered to work this holiday, even though she would have had it off, due to rotation and seniority. He was grateful. No matter how crazy it got, nothing could flap Harlene.
Tearing his eyes away from the scenery, he leaned in and unhooked the mike. “Dispatch, this is fifteen fifty-seven.”
“I wanted to let you know Noble’s in position for traffic control by the bridge and Paul is at the intersection of Main and Canal. Kevin’s going to stay with you in Riverside Park, right?”
“That’s right. It looks like they’ll be starting in about fifteen minutes. They’re trying to get the runners in position.”
“How’s it looking?”
Another woman runner paused, frowning, and reached inside her sports bra to redistribute the load. It must have been one of those high-performance sports bras, because it had a lot to contain.
“Everything looks real good here,” he said truthfully. “Hey, you heard the latest weather yet?”
“It’s supposed to hold off raining until tonight,” Harlene said. “I heard from the fire department. They’re assuming the fireworks will go on as planned, nine o’clock or so. Whoops! Lyle’s on the line; I gotta go. Dispatch out.” The radio crackled off.
He replaced the mike. A gust of wind reminded him to shrug on the windbreaker he had been holding. The wind made the banner stretched across the entrance to the park billow like a spinnaker sail. MILLERS KILL THIRD ANNUAL INDEPENDENCE DAY 10K, it read; BWI Development logos were prominently displayed on each side. To call it “annual” was something of an exaggeration, since the first one had taken place five years ago. The event’s organizers—a hard-core group of runners who also got up a trip to the New York Marathon every year—had had difficulties finding sponsors over the years. The last race, two years back, had been sponsored by an Adirondack dot-com company that went belly-up six months later. This year, they had latched onto BWI, which was splashing out a lot on the event: big booths piled with free oranges, bananas, and energy bars, fancy bottled water, T-shirts for volunteers and competitors.
Riverside Park was a broad swath of green undulating along a twisty stretch of the river between two now-abandoned mills. When serious construction had begun in the early nineteenth century, some entrepreneur had snatched up the land in the hopes of developing it at a great profit. Unfortunately for him, he had failed to account for the fact that the water-powered mills of the time needed long, straight riverbanks. The land escheated to the town for failure to pay taxes and had been a park ever since. Russ suspected the mill workers who had once picnicked here would have laughed themselves sick at the sight of their descendants crowding together for a chance to run six miles in a circle to get a T-shirt.
BWI had sent some of their construction workers to build a platform stand near the riverbank. The mayor, a few members of the running club, and a well-polished man in a pressed polo shirt and khakis, whom Russ pegged as Ingraham, were taking up the space now. Later on, it would be a stage for local bands to play on until the nine o’clock fireworks—if the rain held off. Russ looked up at the sky again. The wind pushing the storm clouds forward seemed to bring the mountains themselves closer, their color an intense green-blue, the texture of spreading leaf and spiky pine picked out in a way you never saw when the day was hot and sunny.
Kevin Flynn’s voice broke into Russ’s musing. “Hi, Reverend Fergusson. You running today?”
He looked over the roof of the cruiser. Clare, kitted out in baggy shorts and a ratty gray army T-shirt, was smiling bemusedly at Flynn. “Yes, I am, Officer Flynn. You have a sharp eye.” She grinned at Russ. “You ought to get the chief to make you a detective.”
“Nah,” the oblivious Flynn said. “You have to have more than one year’s experience.”
“I’m surprised to see you here,” Russ said. “It being a Sunday and all.”
“I don’t think my congregation—all thirty of them who turned up for this morning’s Eucharist—will mind. I like to compete once in awhile, especially in the summer. It keeps me from slacking off on those mornings when it feels too hot to run.” She shivered as another cool breeze gusted past them. “Not that that’s a problem today.”
Flynn hitched his belt up, setting his rig jingling. “Say, Reverend, did I see you driving a Shelby Cobra the other day? That’s a way cool car.”
Clare’s face lighted up. “It is, isn’t it? I bought it from a man who collects early muscle cars. It’s a ’sixty-six, in great condition. Just needed a new carburetor and a little work on the electrical system.” Her voice had taken on a faint southern drawl. “I always wanted me a Shelby.”
Russ crossed his arms and leaned against the roof of the cruiser. “You should have gotten something heavy, with four-wheel drive. Something that can maneuver in the snow.”
Clare and Flynn looked at him. “I’d rather have something I can maneuver on the road,” Clare said.
“Yeah,” Flynn said. “After all, you can always load some weight in the trunk and put on chains come winter-time. What are the specs?”
“Four hundred fifty-two liters and a V-eight. Let me tell you, that little honey can eat up the road.”
“Oh, man, I bet. I’ve heard they can run at eighty without even opening up the throttle full. That I’d like to see.”
“You’re not suggesting Reverend Fergusson break the state speed limit, are you, Officer Flynn?”
Kevin looked abashed. “Um,” he said.
“Don’t pick on the boy, Russ. He has the right idea.” She gave Kevin a gleaming smile. “Just because the only thing you think of is—”
“Safety.”
She waved a hand in the air, dissipating his word like so much blown smoke. “I am a very safe driver. And you’ve never had me drive you anywhere, so you can’t say otherwise. Can you?”
“I’ve let you drive me crazy,” he said. The second it was out of his mouth, he felt the tips of his ears go red. God! What an asinine thing to say!
Clare’s cheeks pinked. Her throat moved as she swallowed, but she didn’t say anything. His mind raced feverishly for something, anything, to throw out to break the silence, since he was pretty sure the earth wouldn’t conveniently open up and swallow him whole.
“Have you heard from Paul Foubert?” he blurted.
She blinked. “No,” she said. Then her face brightened. “No!” she repeated, relief plain in her voice. “Nope, nope, haven’t heard from him. How ’bout you?”
“Not since Friday. Emil’s serious, but stable. He hasn’t woken up yet, so we haven’t been able to get any information from him.” He felt steadier, although his ears were still burning. “We’re still trying to track down the truck involved. “Nothing yet. But we’ve got three county sheriff’s departments and the state police looking, so we’ve cast a pretty wide net. I’m hopeful.”
A skinny teenager in a volunteer T-shirt paused while hurrying past them. “Hey, if you’re racing today, better get over to the pen,” he said to Clare. “They’re starting now.”
“Gotta go,” she said, looking even more relieved. “Wish me luck.”
“Break a leg!” Flynn said.
Clare and Russ both looked at him. “Kevin—” Russ began.
Clare cut him off. “Thank you, Officer Flynn,” she said. “See you at the finish line.” She loped off to join the throng of runners crowded into a rectangular starting area marked off by snapping Tyvek ribbon.
Russ reached beneath his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had missed the bullet on that one, for sure. “Kevin, I’m going to take a turn around the park and—” The shout of the spectators cut him off as the starting official in front whirled and lowered her flag and the runners surged forward, sprinting out of the park entrance and onto Mill Street. He leaned back into the cruiser and keyed the mike. “Dispatch, this is fifteen fifty-seven.”
“Fifteen fifty-seven, I hear you.”
“The runners have left the park. Remind the guys on the intersections that we’re supposed to get an all clear from one of the race coordinators before letting traffic through again. I don’t want to have any stragglers run over.”
“Roger that, fifteen fifty-seven. I’ll get right on it.”
He hung up. “Kevin, I’m going to go show the flag. You stay with the cruiser.” He figured as long as the three hiker chicks were hanging around, it would take a major civil emergency to get the young officer to leave his present post, but it didn’t hurt to reiterate things where Kevin was concerned.
Russ strolled along the perimeter of the park, seeing and being seen, greeting people he knew by name, his eyes constantly scanning for the off note that would mean trouble. A bushy-bearded man who had been celebrating the Fourth a little too hard. A couple whose argument rose and then fell away as he walked by. A pair of bony-shouldered girls who carefully avoided meeting his gaze. Overall, though, it was an easygoing group. Real trouble would come later, after the runners had left and the bands moved in, after the darkness had fallen and the bottles came out from hiding, after the families packed up sleepy children and the remaining party hearties went looking for more fun. As much as he loved a sunny Fourth, he was thankful for the cool breeze and heavy clouds. The threatening skies would ensure that the crowd at the fireworks tonight would be smaller than usual. If they were rained out, he might even be able to pull a few officers and let them go home.
He checked his watch as he neared the bunting-draped platform. It had to be getting close to time for the first runners to make it back. When he had been in his prime—he didn’t want to think how long ago that was—he could complete a ten-kilometer run in well under forty-five minutes. In army boots, too, none of this fancy pumped-up, triple-cushioned, shock-absorbing stuff they loaded onto sneakers these days. Of course, running in army boots probably explained the terrible shape his knees were in now.
“Chief! Over here!” His head swiveled in the direction of the voice. It was Mayor Jim Cameron, waving to him from the platform.
“What’s up?”
“I want you to meet some people. Come on up here.” Russ mounted the steps at one end of the platform while Jim Cameron went on. “Russ Van Alstyne here is the finest chief of police we’ve ever had. He came to us with over a quarter century’s experience as a military policeman. We were lucky he wanted to come back home after he got tired of wandering the world. Russ, this is Bill Ingraham, who’s developing the new resort, and this is John Opperman, Bill’s partner.”
You mean his business partner, Russ thought, remembering what Stephen Obrowski had said.
“How do you do, Mr. Opperman, Mr. Ingraham.” The man in the polo shirt and khakis, who looked as if he had stepped out of a men’s magazine, turned out to be Opperman. Ingraham, surprisingly, was dressed like one more ordinary Fourth of July spectator, wearing a ratty plaid shirt that his wife would never have let out of the house. Except, of course, Ingraham didn’t have a wife. Russ squeezed the man’s hand a little harder.
“Call me Bill,” Ingraham said, reclaiming his hand. “How long have you been with the Millers Kill PD?”
“Five years now. My wife and I moved back here when I retired from the army.” Dropping mention of Linda into a conversation was automatic for him when he was meeting a woman. Just one of those married-guy things. Now he was doing it with a glorified construction worker. Why? To make sure it was clear up front that he was straight? Damn it, he didn’t need to prove anything. It was obvious to anyone that he wasn’t gay. He realized belatedly that Opperman had asked about his wife.
“Hmm? No, she’s not here. I’m on duty all day today, so Linda went to visit some friends.” Of course, Ingraham didn’t come across as gay, either. Neither did Emil Dvorak, now that he thought about it. He shook himself and forced his attention back to the conversation. Might as well do his bit for the town. “I’m sure Mayor Cameron has already said this, but thanks for sponsoring the race today. It’s nice to have it back.”
“It’s good business to be a good neighbor,” Opperman said, sounding like a man who had read too many business-advice books and taken them to heart.
“Right,” Russ said. “Neither of you interested in running, though, I see.”
“John wanted to, but I persuaded him to stick around and help me show you folks the human face behind BWI today.” Ingraham grinned at Opperman. Russ thought the bean counter wasn’t the best candidate to show the human face of anything. He exuded all the warmth of a wet mackerel. Ingraham went on: “John is Mr. Fitness in our organization. He plays pretend army in the woods in the summer, leads a touch-football team in the fall, heads up the basketball league all winter, and—what do you do in the spring, John?”
“Competitive rowing. Six-man shell.”
“There you go. It tires me out just thinking about it. Now me, I agree with Robert Benchley. Whenever I feel the urge to exercise, I lie down until it passes. How ’bout you, Chief? Cops have to stay pretty fit, don’t they?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. At my last checkup, my doctor said, ‘Congratulations, Chief, you have the body of a forty-eight-year-old.’ I said, ‘But I am forty-eight years old.’ ‘Well, there you are,’ she said.”
Ingraham and the mayor laughed. “Seriously,” he continued, “there’s not as much call for foot pursuit as you’d think from watching TV shows. And fortunately, the criminals around here tend to be in worse shape than I am.”
“The crime-rate statistics I studied before we bid for the Landry property indicated very little other than small-scale property crimes and domestic violence,” Opperman said. “One of the attractions for tourists is that this area is safe.”
“That’s true,” Russ said. “And I aim to keep it that way.”
Ingraham turned to his partner. “You do know the police are investigating a serious assault that took place Wednesday last, don’t you? The victim had actually been at the inn where I’m staying right before he was attacked.”
Mayor Jim Cameron leaped in, a reassuring look pasted on his face. “But that’s very, very rare. And the doctor who was attacked was local. I don’t think we’ve ever had any incidents involving tourists, have we, Chief?” He went on before Russ could respond. “I think it’s the influence of our superlative setting. Surrounded by magnificent mountains, pristine lakes, and fish-filled rivers, who can fail to feel happier and more relaxed?”
Plenty of folks, Russ thought, but he kept his mouth shut.
Ingraham laughed. “You don’t have to sell me, Jim. If I didn’t believe this place would draw in visitors, I wouldn’t have picked it for the new resort.”
“It is a site with a lot of visual appeal,” Opperman said. “I’ve flown in several potential investors, and I always swing through the mountains and over the surrounding countryside on those trips. Everyone comments about the extraordinary setting.”
“So, you’re definitely going ahead with the construction?” the mayor said.
“Well, like I said at the meeting, we will as long as we don’t have any trouble from the DEP.”
“Good,” Cameron said. He looked as though he was about to say more, but instead, he closed his mouth and nodded.
Russ thought maybe a change of conversation would be in order. “You said you fly, Mr. Opperman?”
“We hire pilots as necessary, but I’m licensed for both our two-engine prop plane and the company helicopter.”
“What type of helicopter?” Russ asked.
“Why?” Ingraham said. “You like to fly, Chief? John could take you up sometime. No problem.”
“No, but thanks. I’ve got a…friend who used to fly, that’s all.”
The noise from the spectators in the park had surrounded them with a constant hum. Now Russ could hear yells and cheers. “They must be coming in,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to check on how the roads are clearing. Nice meeting you, gentlemen.”
The coed hikers must have headed for greener pastures at some point, because Kevin Flynn was moping about the squad car, looking like a dog left too long outside a store. “Everything okay?” Flynn asked, raising his voice to be heard above the cheers of the crowd around the finish line. Runners were pounding through makeshifts chutes, drenched with sweat despite the cold weather, as a large digital clock displayed their times in tenths of a second.
“No problems yet,” Russ said. He slid into the car, closed the door, and rolled up the window so he could hear Harlene over the noise outside. Flynn hopped in the other door. “Dispatch, this is fifteen fifty-seven.”
“Fifteen fifty-seven, this is Dispatch.”
“The runners are coming in. Make sure those intersections are getting opened up as soon as possible.”
“Roger that.”
“Any news?”
“It’s been pretty quiet so far. There was a fight out to Lockland’s Whispering Pines campground. Somebody pulled out their RV without disconnecting the water and sanitation lines, and Lockland decked the damnfool.”
Kevin snickered. Russ shot him a look. “They get it all sorted out?” Russ asked.
“Yeah, Lyle convinced the RV guy not to press assault charges and Lockland not to press vandalism charges. Lyle said he hadn’t smelled a stink like that since his brother’s cesspool overflowed.”
“Remind me not to complain about sweaty runners. Anything else?”
“We got a call from Bob Mongue over to the state troopers’ headquarters. They’ve got a possible on your red Chevy.”
Russ sat up straighter. “Yeah? Where?”
“The Burgoyne campground on Route Four, south of Whitehall. Big ’ninety-seven pickup with Pennsylvania plates. Good-sized crunch in the right rear.”
“They run the plates?”
“They’re doing it now. Sergeant Mongue’ll call back when they’ve talked with the driver and checked his ID.”
“Raise me as soon as you know anything, Harlene.”
“Will do. I’ve got one more thing for you.”
“Okay.”
“Mrs. Bain called. Thought she saw a man poking around her house, trying to get in.”
“Oh for—” He clenched the microphone and took a deep breath. “How long has it been since her son came for a visit?”
“ ’Bout three months now.”
“Okay. She’s definitely due for a prowler. There’s a copy of the last incident report in the files. Get that out and change the date, will you? That way, it’ll be ready to go when she asks for it.”
“Roger that. Dispatch out.”
“Damn,” he said, hanging up the mike. “If Bob Mongue collars those sons of bitches while I’m chasing down one of Mrs. Bain’s imaginary prowlers, I’ll never hear the end of it.” He shook his head. “This is what a quarter century of police work gets you, Kevin. Keep it in mind.”
Of course, Mrs. Bain was very apologetic when they failed to flush out a burglar. The hardest part on one of her calls was getting away—she kept pressing lemonade and homemade brownies on them. Russ extricated himself and Flynn by promising to have the young officer bring over the incident report in person. They escaped into the squad car, clutching a paper bag of brownies.
“You’re pretty good at that, Chief,” Flynn said. “How do—”
The radio crackled. “Fifteen fifty-seven, this is Dispatch.”
“Dispatch, this is fifteen fifty-seven. Come in.”
“Multiple reports of a disturbance at Riverside Park. One caller described it as a riot.”
Russ stared at the microphone in his hand. “A riot? Over what? Who took second place in the forty-and-over division?”
“Another caller described it as a rowdy demonstration. You better get over there. I’ve sent Noble and Mark, but you’re closer.”
A demonstration. The brownie in his stomach suddenly felt like a small lead brick. “We’re rolling, Dispatch. Keep me informed.”
“Will do. Dispatch out.”
Kevin Flynn was almost beside himself with excitement. “A riot? Are we going to get out the riot gear?”
“No, we’re not going to start lobbing gas grenades into a bunch of runners on the Fourth of July.” He switched on the lights and siren, dreading what he suspected he might see when they got there. BWI…a large open space…plenty of people around…He knew he should have put the elements together before now.
They couldn’t reach the park entrance in the cruiser. Despite blipping the siren to get people out of the way, it was too crowded. He parked and waded through the press of bodies, hauling people out of his way if they didn’t move fast enough, Kevin bobbing along in his wake.
“Two! Four! Six! Eight! We don’t want precipitate!”
All around him, spectators, picnickers, and runners were talking loudly and excitedly, pushing forward for a better view.
“A! B! C! D! Keep your lousy PCB!”
He could see the placards bouncing above the protesters’ heads, seven or eight of them: BAN PCBs and NO DREDGING AND WILL WORK FOR CANCER.”
“In! Out! Up! Down! Don’t contaminate our town!”
Sounded like the goddamned cheers were written by a preschool teacher. There was a scuffle on the platform, which was so jammed with people now that he couldn’t make out what was going on yet. He spotted Noble Entwistle forcing his way through the crowd from the riverbank side of the park.
“Brown! Blue! Gray! Green! Keep our soil and water clean!”
The sounds of a loud argument came from the platform; then the banner with its prominently displayed BWI logos shivered, and both weighted poles holding it toppled over with a loud clang. Aldermen leaped from the back of the structure to escape the tangle of fabric. In the ensuing confusion, the demonstration’s spokesperson thrust herself to the front edge of the small stage, bullhorn pointed toward the spectators. “Parents of Millers Kill! Do you want to risk your children’s health to make a development company in Baltimore rich?”
Russ fought to keep from closing his eyes in denial. There it was, his worst fear, in the flesh.
The remaining people on the platform stood helpless, unwilling to tackle the protester, and who could blame them? A seventy-four-year-old woman’s bones could break mighty easily.
He was within shouting distance now. “Mom!” he bellowed. “Get down from there!”
Chapter Nine
“Good Lord,” Clare said to no one in particular. Behind her, someone shoved forward, causing her to stumble and splash herself and the man in front of her with half the contents of her water bottle. The wet man turned and snarled at her. “I’m so sorry,” Clare said. She plucked her sodden T-shirt away from her goose bump–prickled flesh. She cooled down fast after a run, and all she had wanted to do was collect her official time, get back to her car, and pull on the sweats she had stashed there. Now she was stuck in a gridlock of excited humanity, pinned between the placard-waving protestors in front of her and what seemed like half the population of Millers Kill behind.
“Mom, get down from there!” she heard Russ order.
Mrs. Van Alstyne lowered her megaphone. “You’ll have to come and get me,” she said. The crowd nearby roared with laughter, and Clare could see Russ’s cheeks and ears turn pink.
“I know some of you think we’re doomed to be exposed to PCBs because we’re near Hudson Falls,” Mrs. Van Alstyne said through her megaphone. “I know some of you think the jobs that’ll come out of the new spa are worth a few extra chemicals in the groundwater.”
The eager watchers behind Clare pushed her steadily forward toward the center knot of protestors. Around her, faces were amused, incredulous, angry. She could see one…two…three video cameras in the crowd, pointed at Margy Van Alstyne, the chief of police, the demonstrators. This thing was going to be better documented than a Rose Garden speech. A young woman slipped between spectators, thrust one flyer from a ream of photocopied papers into Clare’s hand, and disappeared, working her way through the crowd. In the press of bodies around her, Clare had to hold the paper close to her face. STOP BWI DEVELOPMENT NOW! the heading screamed. On one side, it was a broadside against BWI; on the other, a gruesome list of the effects of PCB exposure. She tuned back in to Margy Van Alstyne’s speech.
“PCBs are known to cause cancer! PCBs are known to increase aggression!” Clare could see Russ’s head above the crowd as he made his way to the platform.
“Baltimore-based BWI stands to make millions from this development! Meanwhile, we get minimum-wage service-industry jobs and enough PCBs in the water to cause cancer in thirty percent of our population!”
“Any job’s better’n no job!” someone shouted from the crowd.
“They’re promising to pay eight dollars an hour,” a woman yelled.
Bill Ingraham was moving purposefully toward Mrs. Van Alstyne. Russ vaulted onto the platform’s edge and waved him off.
“Look around you at your friends and neighbors!” Margy Van Alstyne shouted. “One out of every four people you see could be dead from cancer within a decade. How many dollars an hour is that worth? No! Get your hands off me!”
Russ had wrapped his arms around his mother’s waist and lifted her bodily off the platform. She waved her megaphone out of his reach. “I have a right to speak! I have First Amendment rights!”
Russ grunted from the effort of pulling her away from the platform’s edge. “No permit,” he managed to gasp out. His mother flailed and twisted, and he staggered back, sending the mayor and several top runners scrambling to get out of his way. Boos erupted from the crowd.
“Let her speak!”
“What’re you afraid of?”
Russ put his mother down. “No permit for public demonstration,” he said more firmly. “Disturbing the peace, resisting an officer, and possible battery. Cuff her, Officer Flynn.”
“Me?” said Flynn.
Another protestor, the redheaded nurse Clare had seen at the town meeting, launched herself over the edge of the platform. Mrs. Van Alstyne tossed her the megaphone. “Ask yourself why the police and the mayor don’t want us to speak to you,” she shouted.
“Damn it, Laura, get down off there. Don’t make me write you up again.” Russ turned to drag her away from the impromptu podium. She danced out of reach.
“The government of this town is too blinded by the thought of the tax income from this development to look after your health,” the nurse shouted. “But you can demand the DEP stop this spa! You can demand new testing of the Landry site! You can demand—oof!”
Russ picked her up with considerably less effort than it had taken to move his mother. Boos mixed with cheers. The central knot of protestors took up the chant again, reinforced by other voices chiming in. To Clare’s right, someone called out, “Development means jobs! Development means jobs!” and the cry instantly spread into a ragged countercall. “Damn Commies,” one beefy man in front of her said to another. “They think government control of property is so great, I say let’s ship ’em off to North Korea.”
Officer Entwhistle was trying to remove the protestors, or the people harassing them. It was impossible to tell. Despite her soggy clothes and her clammy skin, and despite her grandmother’s voice warning her, This isn’t any of your business, miss, Clare couldn’t keep herself from trying to get closer. She edged sideways between individuals, couples, clumps of people, buffeted by excited voices.
“Folks? Folks? I’m Bill Ingraham, and I am BWI Development.” Someone had rescued the microphone stand from beneath the fallen banner and set it up in front of Ingraham. “I said this at Wednesday night’s town meeting and I’ll say it again: If you folks don’t want our resort in your community, we’re outta here.” He didn’t look like the genial, controlled businessman he had been at the meeting. He looked like a construction boss who had just found out his crew was threatening to unionize. “Personally, and professionally, I think connecting your PCB problem with our development site is bad science and worse business.”
“PCBs were stored on that site twenty-five years ago!” someone yelled from the crowd.
“Yeah, and then the storage canisters were removed by the government and the site was cleaned up. Look, folks, the feds and the state have both given the place the thumbs-up. Either you trust the government or you don’t. But if you don’t, why the hell would you want to call them in again?”
“He’s right! Listen to the man!” another person yelled.
“I take pride in my resorts. I build ’em right and I try to be as environmentally sensitive as possible.” The protestors jeered. “If you don’t want us here, call in the DEP and we’re gone. But don’t send a bunch of scientifically illiterate witches after me!” He thrust the microphone into the stand with enough force to set it rocking, stalked to the rear of the platform, and leaped down, disappearing from view.
The babble of the crowd was deafening. Mayor Jim Cameron visibly wavered between snatching the microphone or running after Ingraham. The urge to apologize to the developer must have won out, because he let himself down over the rear of the platform and also vanished.
Russ, who must have unloaded his mother on Officer Flynn, strode back to the front of the platform. He didn’t bother with a microphone, simply cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “You people are demonstrating without a permit. You must disperse now. Anyone who fails to disperse peaceably will be arrested.” The central knot of protestors promptly sat down and started singing “We Shall Overcome.” Clare could see Russ’s lips moving, but it didn’t look like he was saying anything fit for public consumption.
She heard the siren of another police car. Time to get out of here. She had to keep her head down and use her elbows aggressively to wedge her way between bodies. Very few people seemed inclined to leave before the show was over.
“Certainly the most interesting thing to happen on the Fourth of July since that streaker in ’seventy-nine, don’t you—”
“No proof that any of the stuff is coming from the development site.”
“—with husbands supporting them and too much time on their—”
“Thank God somebody has enough guts to stand up to the Board of—”
“You said the same thing when they did the Million Mom March, and you were wrong then, too.”
“He’s not gonna be a problem after tonight, is he?”
Those words, accompanied by a little laugh, raised the hairs on the back of Clare’s neck. She stopped dead, turning to see who had spoken. A pair of parents bore down on her, arms full of squirming children, and she was pushed out of the way. By the time they passed, the crowd had shifted around her again. She had no idea whose gravelly, gloating voice had made a simple sentence sound like a threat. That group of teenage boys? They looked too young. That man with his wife? Too old. She rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand. She was losing it. The attacks, and now this public pandemonium, had tipped her over the edge. She continued working her way to the back of the crowd, holding fast to the thought of her car, a warm sweatshirt, and a peaceful ride back to her quiet rectory. Small-town rural parish indeed. She should have asked the bishop for combat pay before coming to Millers Kill.
When Clare got home, the first thing she did was shower until her hot water ran out. She had never been so cold on a Fourth of July in her life. Then she wrapped herself tightly in a full-length terry-cloth robe identical to a monk’s habit, complete with cowl. It had been a gift from her brother Brian, who over the years had also given her a clock in the shape of an Apache helicopter, a pair of army tap-dancing boots, and a recruiting poster featuring Michelangelo’s God and the words I WANT YOU. She had just eased a half pound of linguine into a pot of boiling water in preparation for a carb fest when her phone rang.
“Clare? Russ. I need you to do me a favor.”
His voice was strangely hushed. “Russ? Where are you?”
“At the Washington County Jail.”
“What are you doing at the jail?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized how inane they sounded. “I mean, I thought you’d be back on patrol.”
“It’s my mother,” he said, his voice as grim as she’d ever heard it. “I’m trying to get her out.”
She decided not to mention that he had been the one to put his mom there in the first place. “Is there some sort of delay with the bail bondsman? Does she have to wait for a hearing or something?”
“I put up her damned bond myself. She won’t accept it! She says she’s a damned prisoner of conscience and she’s not leaving until she gets to make a public appearance before a judge!” He was practically hissing at this point. “’Scuse my French,” he added.
“Why are you whispering?” she said, involuntarily whispering, as well.
“I’m calling you from the booking room. There are about a dozen cops and guards here, and every one of ’em knows I arrested my own mother for disorderly conduct. You know what she kept calling me in front of the bondsman?” He dropped his voice further. “ ‘Sweetie!’ I’m never gonna live this down.”
She bit the inside of her lip. When she knew she could speak without a trace of laughter in her voice, she said, “What do you need me to do?”
“Get the dogs.”
“The dogs?”
“Those two beasts we left with Mom. She put them inside the house. Her hearing isn’t until nine o’clock tomorrow morning, and she may not be processed and out until noon. They can’t stay inside the whole time.” He exhaled. “I’d go up there and let them out myself, but I’m on duty until midnight and things are already picking up. I need to get out of here and back on patrol.”
She looked at her linguine, the tomatoes and garlic cloves lined up on her cutting board, the wineglass waiting to be filled. “You know I’m glad to help, but…getting into your mom’s house…isn’t this something a family member ought to do? Your sister? Your wife?”
“Janice took the kids to her in-laws for the weekend, and my brother-in-law is alone with forty cows. He wouldn’t leave them unattended if God himself got on the phone and asked him over. And I can’t ask Linda.” The tone of his voice did not invite further questions.
“What about…” Her mind cast around for reasons why this was a bad idea. “But they can’t run around here in my yard. They’re big dogs; they need their exercise.”
“Well, then, take them to the park and let them run off-leash.”
“You can do that in the park?”
“Hell, yeah. The park’s very animal-friendly. There used to be two big water troughs there for dogs and horses, until they were torn out in the eighties.”
The only other objections she could think of were even more inane than the last one.
“Clare,” he said. His voice went even lower. “Please.”
She closed her eyes. “Of course. I’ll do it. I’m on my way right now.”
“Can you find her place again?”
“The U.S. Army trusted me to fly very expensive helicopters over large stretches of unmarked territory without getting lost. I think I can find Old Scanadaiga Road.”
“Old Sacandaga Road.”
“That, too. Is her house locked? How do I get in?”
“Yes, her house is locked.” She could hear him restraining himself from commenting on her own habits. “The spare key is under the geranium pot farthest to the left on the front steps. Not the kitchen door, where you go in, but the front.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll keep the dogs as long as necessary. Just tell your mom to give me a call when she’s sprung”—she grinned at the noise he made—“and we’ll take it from there.”
“Thanks, Clare. I owe you one.”
“Your debt is forgiven. Now go and do likewise.”
He laughed. “Yes, Father Flanagan.”
She hung up, thinking she liked making Russ laugh. It almost made up for the leaden way her body responded to the idea of getting dressed and going back out. Parishioners had invited her to three cookouts, two fireworks-watching ensembles, and on a trip to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center for the concert tonight. She had declined them all, knowing that after celebrating two Eucharists and running the 10K race, the only thing she would feel up to doing was collapsing in front of the television. She pulled the linguine off the burner. “ ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends,’ ” she said, heading back upstairs to change.
Old Route 100 between Millers Kill and Margy Van Alstyne’s house was far busier than it had been on Thursday. Clare passed minivans crowded with sticky children, tiny cars with kayaks teetering on top, and bass-thumping stereos on wheels, filled with wind-whipped hair of indeterminate origin. Along the heavily wooded stretch she had to slow to a stop to accommodate a truck that seemed, at first glance, to be picking up National Guardsmen on maneuvers. It wasn’t until she got a closer look at the men straggling out of the forest that she saw the fluorescent orange and green splatters on their jackets and realized they were paintball players. Near the intersection of Route 100 and the Old Sacandaga Road, she saw no fewer than three buses headed back from rafting trips on the Hudson. She marveled that people would pay good money to get stuck, not to mention soaking wet, on a rubber raft on a day that had promised sixty-degree weather and rain.
The dogs, when she had found the key and unlocked the kitchen door, were as ecstatic to see her as they had been the last time. “Don’t get used to this,” she warned them. “I won’t always be here to rescue you from being left alone. No, Bob! Down!” She let them have the run of the backyard while she slung the already seriously depleted bag of kibble into her tiny trunk. She made a metal note to stop at the IGA and buy another fifty pounds before returning the dogs to Margy. God knew when Paul Foubert would return from Albany.
Returning to the kitchen to get the dogs’ bowls, she gave in to the temptation to take a peek at the front room. At first glance, it looked like a typical seventy-year-old lady’s living room: braided rug on the floor, comfortable well-worn furniture from the fifties, a prominently positioned television with a TV Guide and glasses on top. But the books piled on the coffee table had titles like Environmental Impact of Modern Manufacturing and The Consumers’ Guide to the Waste Stream. One wall was almost completely covered with framed photographs: small kids in ancient black and white who must have been Russ and his sister, modern color portraits of Janice’s three little girls. Margy at a sit-in, Margy beneath a banner reading SEEDS OF PEACE, and, on a page from a 1970 Time magazine, Margy face-to-face with Nelson Rockefeller, thrusting a framed picture toward the governor. Both of them were yelling at each other.
The picture Margy was holding in the magazine photo was hanging just below. Clare unhooked it from its nail and held it up. It showed a tall, too-thin young man, tan and shirtless, hair bleached blond from the sun, set off against exotic palms in the background. He could have been a late-sixties surfer, if not for the dog tags and the fatigues, and the M16 slung over his shoulder. She ran a finger over the glass. She had never imagined him that young. She would have been six or seven when this picture was taken, learning to read Dick and Jane books while he slept in mud and fought off intestinal parasites and tried to keep from getting killed every day. Their difference in age, which had never meant anything to her before, suddenly yawned wide, a vast chasm filled with events he had lived through as an adult that were nothing but stories and history and vague childhood memories to her.
Margy Van Alstyne would probably love to tell her stories about Russ as a young man. She could come out for a visit and hear about his childhood, and what he was like in high school, and where he went while he was in the service. Maybe she could find out more about his wife. Her grandmother’s voice broke in. If you don’t want to go to Atlanta, missy, you’d best not get on that train. She took a deep breath. Or, she could mind her own business and leave the Van Alstynes alone. She rehung the photograph carefully in its spot, squaring it just so with its neighbors. Then she retreated to the kitchen before she could yield to temptation again.
The ride back to Millers Kill took even longer than the ride out, in part due to the heavy end-of-the-day traffic and in part due to the necessity of driving slowly when the car was filled to capacity with dogs. It didn’t help that she felt irritated at her foray into Mrs. Van Alstyne’s living room. She was asked to do a simple favor for someone who had helped her out immeasurably by taking the dogs in the first place, and she had used it as an excuse to moon over the woman’s married son. It was just plain tacky, that’s what it was.
Everyone in the seminary had heard of some priest who had crossed the line between compassion and passion and broken up a marriage or two in the process. Nine times out of ten, it was a parishioner who had been in counseling, or the church secretary. Well, most of her counseling these days was with young engaged couples, and Lois was certainly no threat to her virtue. If she just showed a little more self-control, she wouldn’t have a problem.
There had been a time, when she was a lieutenant, that she had developed a terrific crush on an out-of-bounds man. He was a captain, directly above her in the chain of command, and if anything had happened between them, it could have meant both their jobs. Handling her feelings, she had discovered, meant never lingering over the thought of him, never daydreaming, never fantasizing. Eventually, her tour of duty finished, she left, and within a year she couldn’t recall what it was that had gotten her so hot and bothered in the first place.
By the time she pulled into the rectory driveway, her little car shimmying from Gal and Bob’s excited wriggling, she felt better. Self-discipline was something she knew how to do. As if in reward for her good thoughts, there was a message on her answering machine.
“Clare? Hi, it’s Paul. I hope you can hear this okay, I’m using the pay phone in the lobby and the thing dates back to the Eisenhower administration. Great news! Emil has woken up and is responding to speech! He’s having trouble talking, but the neurologist says that’s normal at this point, that it doesn’t mean anything. He recognized me, and his kids, and he managed to squeeze our hands a little. I feel so grateful, I can’t tell you. I hope Bob and Gal are doing okay”—the dogs both barked sharply when they heard their names—“and that they’re not wearing you out. I’ll try to reach you again as soon as I know something new. Thanks again for everything, Clare.”
“You see?” she said to the Berns. “Doing good is its own reward. Let’s go make some dinner.”
Two plates of linguini later, stretched out on the sofa with a glass of Chianti, watching the Boston Pops Esplanade concert, Clare was beginning to think she ought to look into getting a dog. It was fun having someone to talk to in the kitchen, even if neither Gal nor Bob was a great conversationalist. And seeing them stretched out on the hardwood floor was deeply satisfying. It made her feel English. The Vicar of Dibley crossed with a James Herriot story. Maybe she could get herself one of those canvas coats, and a walking stick. She yawned.
Gal and Bob got up, shook themselves, and walked into the foyer.
“What is it? Do you two want to go out?”
At the word out, both dogs barked. Clare groaned. As she rolled off the sofa, they began to whine and pant, and by the time she joined them in the foyer, their nails were clicking madly on the wooden floor as they jostled each other to be first out the door.
She opened the door to the damp and cold and the dogs bounded out, ran straight to the edge of the sidewalk, turned to look at her, and began barking.
“Shhh! Shhh!” She wrestled on her sneakers and pulled a running shell with reflective stripes over her head. Where had she tossed those leashes? In the kitchen? When she finally stepped out onto the front porch, the Berns ran to her, leaping joyously and barking even louder. “Sssh! It’s nine o’clock, for heaven’s sake. This isn’t the country! I’ve got neighbors.” The dogs promptly sat, tails thumping, looking at her expectantly. “I get the feeling that, unlike me, you two didn’t get enough exercise today. Am I right? C’mon, then, we can walk down to the park. If they haven’t canceled because of the weather, we might even see some fireworks.”
Each wrought-iron lamp along Church Street had its own halo, its light a soft glow in the mist. The usually strident sodium orange looked like gaslight, shading the red-white-and-blue bunting, flickering over the slick leaves rustling in nearby trees. The dogs had fallen silent as soon as Clare had led them out on the leashes, and she could hear far-off noises amplified in the developing fog. There were few people on the sidewalks at this hour. Clare would hear footsteps clicking and someone would emerge from the mist, smile or look startled, and then vanish behind her. It might have been unnerving if she had been alone, but walking behind two large and well-behaved dogs made it a genteel adventure, like strolling through Victorian London. She added Sherlock Holmes to her list of English images.
They crossed Main Street, turned down Mill, and continued toward Riverside Park. As they got closer, she could hear distant voices in a current of many conversations. A flicker of excitement made her smile. The fireworks must still be on. She picked up her pace, hurrying past shabby shops and mill offices whose brick facades were the color of old blood in the dark.
From the abandoned textile mill on its left to the decrepit pulping mill on its right, the park was set off from the street by almost half a mile of high iron-rail fencing. The central entrance, which had marked the start of the race this afternoon, had a wide ornate gate overtopped by a wrought-iron arch, the whole fixture a monument to the prosperity that had vanished from the area after World War II. It was that gate she was shooting for, but she had scarcely passed the textile mill when the first muffled thud sounded somewhere over the river and she saw a dazzle of green light. A chorus of oohs and aahs came from inside the park.
The trees grew close along the fence and the underbrush had been left to fend for itself, so it was hard to see. She couldn’t even make out the next explosion, but in the fog-reflected light, she could see a faster way into the park: an unobtrusive door-size gate almost indistinguishable from the fence around it. A century before, it must have been the quick lunch-hour entrance for the mill workers.
She pulled the dogs up short, almost jerking herself off her feet in the process, and pushed against the gate. She was actually surprised when it opened. Bob and Gal didn’t need any encouragement to desert the sidewalk. They plowed through the underbrush, sending whip-thin branches lashing back toward Clare, showering her with the collected damp off the leaves. When they emerged, Clare’s sneakers were thoroughly soaked and her hair was clinging to her head in wet clumps.
Another explosion, a halogen-bright expanding sphere that collapsed into a rain of stars. It was still too thickly wooded for her to see clearly. “Come on, guys, this way,” she said, heading toward the water. The next explosion was a series of green and pink shell bursts, accompanied a second later by a staccato of ear-popping bangs. She glanced down at Bob and Gal, but they were too busy covering every square inch of ground for scents to notice what was going on in the sky. Bob lurched toward a tree to leave his mark and Clare followed, her face still turned toward the sky. “Oh, look at that, I love that one,” she said as a series of red, white, and blue lights fountained across the sky. The dogs tugged her farther, snuffling and peeing as they went. A swarm of yellow lights spread round and flat, creating shapes in the middle of a circle. “Is that a smiley face? It is! Good grief.”
Gal whined.
Clare bent down and ruffled Gal’s silky hair. “Don’t like smiley faces? I can’t say I blame you.”
The dog didn’t respond to Clare. She quivered, body tense, nose pointed toward the thicket of brush and trees dividing the park from the mill. Bob turned in exactly the same position. Both dogs whined.
“What is it, boy?” Clare scratched Bob’s broad head. “Did you see a squirrel?”
The dogs pulled toward the thicket. “Is anybody there?” Clare asked, feeling foolish. Far away from the spectators at the water’s edge, hidden in the shadow of the three-story mill wall, the long stretch of vegetation was probably the perfect spot for necking. She didn’t want the dogs to flush out some poor pair of half-naked teenagers.
Gal growled, stopped, then barked once. Bob stopped beside her, growling. The hairs on the back of Clare’s neck rose, and she involuntarily looked behind her. “Who’s there?” she asked, infusing her voice with every ounce of authority she could muster.
The mist lit up as whirls of green and pink spun overhead. There was an explosive sound from the fireworks, but nothing except rustling leaves ahead. She knew she ought to just go. Take the dogs to the waterside and watch the end of the display. She could easily find someone with a cell phone and call the police if she honestly thought something was not right. She should go.
She tugged the leashes up to move the dogs toward the thicket. “Come on,” she said quietly. As they drew closer, Gal began whimpering again. The dogs slowed, too well trained to refuse but clearly reluctant. Two yards away, they both dropped to their bellies, whining.
Despite the cool dampness on her face and her wet hair, Clare felt hot prickles down her arms and along her back. She blinked, light-headed for a second, and realized she had been breathing too fast and too shallow. She opened her mouth and took a deep, shuddering breath that didn’t do anything to stop her heart from skittering inside her chest.
She tugged the leashes again, but the dogs had reached their limit. They whined, then whined even more fretfully when she stepped past them to part the branches of a bittersweet-entwined sumac to peer inside. Nothing. She made herself step through the undergrowth and brush, pushing through something with tiny twigs and clumps of berries that tapped against her cheeks and fingers. Nothing. She stubbed her sneaker-shod toe against something hard and swallowed a scream before she heard the clanking sound and felt a pipe rolling beneath her foot. She had stumbled across the graveyard of an old plumbing system. She squatted down and waved through the darkness until her knuckles hit something—smooth marble or polished granite. The shape of it under her hands made her think of a sarcophagus. She thrust the morbid idea from her mind. Rectangular, rounded edges—a basin? Her fingers slipped through something wet clinging to the cool stone interior. She gasped and jerked her hand away, lurching to her feet. Then she realized what she had found. One of the old watering troughs Russ had mentioned. It smelled of old water and decayed leaves and the iron tang of rust. The dogs keened behind her, and in a split second her fear flashed into irritation. “What is it?” she snapped. “If there’s some drowned cat in here, I’m going to be—”
Overhead, a white explosion cascaded into yellow and purple, and blue spheres filled the sky. A crash of explosions battered the air. She could see the watering trough now, bone-pale, long as a child’s coffin, mottled by the leaves’ shadows. And there, finally, was the reason for the dogs’ whimpering. Clare saw the fireworks reflecting in thick black blood, winking along the edges of torn flesh, illuminating dull, flat eyes.
Over the cacophony of the fireworks’ finale, she heard a wavering, high-pitched moan, rising and rising until she cried out, her voice choking, and she realized it was her. She was making the terrible noise as the cloudbursts of light exploded overhead, revealing and concealing the puffy, battered thing that had once been Bill Ingraham.
Chapter Ten
The crime scene was lighted like a carnival midway by the time Russ arrived. Two tall tungsten lamps flooded the ground and trees with a white glare, turning every shadow into a razor-edged anti-leaf and non-branch. The red lights of two squad cars circled monotonously next to what the Millers Kill PD referred to as “the meat wagon”—the squat mortuary transport used when there was no hope the ambulance would be useful. From behind a taut yellow tape, a dozen or more flashlights bobbed aimlessly as their owners, packing blankets and coolers, crowded in to get a glimpse of something much more exciting than fireworks. White, red, and yellow reflected off the lowering mist until the night itself glowed and Russ thought he could see individual drops of water suspended in midair.
Mark Durkee, who had been bumped up the seniority ladder when they’d hired Kevin Flynn, was working the crowd, notebook out, presumably taking names and statements. Russ ducked under the tape and waved at Lyle MacAuley. “Hey,” Russ said. “You set him on that?” He gestured with his head toward Durkee.
“He thought of it on his own. He read up on spotting perps who return to the scene and on this new technique of taking pictures of the spectators before running them off. It gets the possible witnesses on film, so we can match ’em up with their statements. He whipped out one of those little disposable cameras and went to it. He’s got a lot on the ball.”
“Yeah,” Russ said. “Let’s hope he doesn’t take it to someplace where they pay better.”
Lyle snorted. His unofficial status as detective had finally been rewarded with a promotion at the spring town meeting, after four years of Russ lobbying the Board of Aldermen to create a detective position. He couldn’t get that approved, but they had eventually given in to his argument that Lyle would leave if his experience wasn’t recognized. So now Lyle was deputy chief, on a force with eight full-time officers and four part-timers. The only way he could make sense of it was to conclude the aldermen felt they were getting their money’s worth if they got two jobs filled with one paycheck.
Sergeant Morin, one of the state police technicians, was opening his portable lab box and pulling out his elaborate camera equipment. “Has he been in yet?” Russ asked.
“He and I searched the area adjacent to the body. Nothing turned up. People were swarming up from the riverbank, so I made getting the tape up a priority.”
Russ nodded. “Good call. Let’s go see this guy, shall we?” He pulled on the latex gloves he had removed from his squad car.
“He was done right here and then laid out in this thing,” Lyle said, holding a wet sumac branch out of the way. “There’s a hell of a lot of blood—on the ground, on the basin, in the water.”
Russ stepped carefully in Lyle’s footsteps. When they reached the crumpled form in the watering trough, he sucked in against his teeth. “Jeez. You’re not kidding.” He squatted down slowly so as not to catch his clothing on any vegetation. “That must have been a garrote. I don’t think a knife could do that.”
“That was my take. It’ll make it harder if it is. No cut pattern to match to a knife. Just wash off a length of wire and roll it back on the spool. Whose gonna know?”
Russ stood again. The metallic smell of blood was strong enough to make his eyes water. “Yeah, but to use it, you have to be in close. Real close. Whoever did this must have been splattered with blood.” He looked at Lyle. “Anyone see anything?”
“Nothin’ yet. But it couldn’t have happened too long before he was found. A lot of that’s still wet.”
“I’ll wait for Emil’s opinion, but I have to—” Russ stopped, feeling foolish. “I mean, not Emil Dvorak…”
“Dr. Scheeler is acting as our ME. He’s the pathologist on loan from Glens Falls Hospital.”
“Until Emil gets back.”
“Right. Until he gets back.” Lyle smiled a little.
“Hey, guys,” Sergeant Morin called through the foliage. I need you to clear out for a few so’s I can get my shots.” Russ and Lyle retraced their steps slowly and deliberately, disturbing the plants as little as possible. “Thanks,” Morin said, disappearing into the leaves.
“Okay. Who found him?”
Lyle ran a hand over his bristly gray crew cut and nodded at a cluster of three trees, past the yellow tape, almost out of reach of the tungsten lights. “They did.”
He could see a woman, her face a pale oval, sitting at the base of a maple tree, squeezed in between two enormous black-and-white dogs. “You’re kidding me,” he said.
“Nope. It’s your priest all right.”
“She’s not my priest,” he said over his shoulder, striding toward Clare.
She looked up as he approached her. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, her skin was starkly pale, and her dark blonde hair hung lankly over her shoulders. She had an arm wrapped around one of the huge Berns, her fingers buried in its thick fur. He stopped several feet away because he didn’t trust himself to get any closer without touching her. He squatted to be at eye level. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes,” she said, as if trying out a new voice. “I’m—whatever happened, it was all over by the time I got there.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
She nodded again. Took a deep breath. “I walked the dogs down here to see the fireworks. I was coming along that way”—she pointed toward the east side of Mill Street—“when I saw the fireworks were starting. There was a gate, a little gate, just past the corner of the mill, and I pushed on it to get through faster, because I wanted to see the fireworks, and they had started, and then Gal caught the scent. They both started whining and growling, and I thought it was—I don’t know, I don’t know what I thought it was, but I went to see what was scaring them.” She clamped a hand over her mouth. Her eyes flooded with tears. “It was so…I keep thinking of this gruesome old hymn we used to sing at my grandmother’s church.” She tilted her head against the tree. “ ‘There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel’s veins,’ ” she sang, her voice a shaky thread. “ ‘And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains…. The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day; and there have I, though vile as he, washed all my sins away.’ ”
One of the dogs whined and butted her with its head. She clutched at its hair, scrubbing her eyes with her other hand. “It used to scare me when I was a little kid.”
“I don’t blame you.” His hand twitched toward her, then stopped.
“It was that developer, Bill Ingraham, you know. I could tell, even with…”
“Yeah. I saw. Tell me about the gate. It was open?”
She took another deep breath. “Yes. It surprised me at the time, because it obviously isn’t used regularly. There wasn’t any path leading from it into the park.”
He glanced in the direction she had indicated. “Did you see anything as you came through the bushes there?”
“No. But I was mostly just trying to keep the branches from smacking me in the face. There wasn’t anyone there, if that’s what you mean.” She frowned, and he relaxed somewhat, seeing reason replace her sheer emotional reaction. “The dogs would have reacted if whoever did that had gone the way we came in. The smell of blood made them very nervous, and he must have been—” her face wavered for a moment, but she went on: “He must have had a lot of blood on his clothing.”
“That’s what we think, yeah. Did you see anything around the body? Anything that looked disturbed, out of place?”
“Oh, God, I don’t know. There could have been signs hanging in the trees and I wouldn’t have seen them.” She turned her face into one of the dog’s necks for a moment. “I probably messed up the area some. I remember thinking not to touch anything, but I kind of fell backward and…I was in a hurry to get away.” Her expression changed again, and he realized she was ashamed. “I didn’t even think of saying a prayer. All I thought of was getting my sorry self out of there. I didn’t stop running until I found someone with a phone, and even after she called it in, I didn’t want to go anywhere near…him.”
“Good,” he said firmly. “We don’t want you standing around praying at a crime scene. You did exactly the right thing. You got out, you reported it, and you helped us get here fast so we have a better chance of finding the bad guy.”
“Oh.” She looked down.
“When you were walking over here, did you pass anyone on the street? Anyone who seemed out of the ordinary maybe?”
“Anyone dripping gore like Banquo’s ghost? No.” She immediately waved her hand. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be flip. I passed a few people on Church and Main, but after I turned onto Mill Street, I didn’t see anything, not a person, not a car.”
“Okay, thanks.” He stood up, his knees complaining mightily. “You stay right here. I need to talk with Lyle and the crime-scene tech, and then we’ll see about getting you home.”
“How’s your mother?” she asked suddenly. “Did you ever get her out?”
“Safe and sound in the woman’s wing of the Washington County jail,” he said, “so I can rule her out as a suspect.”
“Russ! That’s a terrible thing to say about your own—” She let go of the dogs and stood abruptly, glancing around. “At the protest this afternoon. I heard something.” She looked up at him. “It was right after you had ordered the demonstrators to disperse. I was trying to leave, and as I was making my way through the crowd, I heard someone say, ‘He’s not gonna be a problem after tonight, is he?’ ”
“Uh-huh. Look, it’s common to put all sorts of ominous meanings into ordinary things when a murder—”
“Don’t make me sound like I’m a few chimes short of a clock. This voice was creepy. Threatening. It made me stop where I stood to try to see who had said it.”
He held up his hands. “Okay. I’m not saying you didn’t hear something. But even if you did, it’s not going to be of any use to us.” Lyle was walking toward them, gesturing questioningly with his arms. “There must have been two hundred people in the park at that time. Maybe more. Whoever did this could have walked right past you, me, the mayor, and Officer Entwhistle, and there wouldn’t be any way of knowing it.”
Lyle ambled up between them. “What’s up?” He bent over and scratched Bob’s head and was rewarded by a tail thump. “Doc Scheeler’s here, and Morin’s waiting with his Baggies to catch anything good. Thought you might like to sit in.”
“Yeah, I do. Reverend Fergusson didn’t see anything.”
“But I heard something,” she said.
Lyle raised his bushy gray eyebrows. “You did? Great.”
Russ shook his head. “Don’t get all excited. She heard someone with a threatening voice say, ‘He’s not gonna be a problem after tonight’ at the demonstration this afternoon. After the race.”
“Oh.” Lyle turned to Clare. “I’m sure it sounded scary, but it really doesn’t tell us anything.”
“If it was the man who killed Bill Ingraham, it tells us this wasn’t some case of gay cruising gone horribly wrong. This was planned out in advance.” Clare folded her arms, her posture challenging them to prove her wrong.
Lyle and Russ looked at each other. “Ingraham was gay?” Lyle asked. Russ nodded. “Well, that puts a different spin on things.”
“A bad pickup was the first thing that popped into my head,” Russ said to him. “Although I think Payson’s Park and out by the old cemetery are the only places we’ve chased off guys cruising before.” He frowned and swung back to Clare. “How do you know about cruising?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Russ, I didn’t spend my entire adult life locked in a seminary. When I was teaching at Fort Rucker, there was a strip where men would cruise for anonymous sex. With other men. There was a murder there, too—a young man from town. Two privates on leave picked him up and then beat him to death.” She looked from him to Lyle and back again. “But if I heard someone talking about murdering Ingraham this afternoon—”
“Reverend, you probably heard someone talking about his blister, not planning a murder,” Lyle said. “That park was filled with the whole crowd from the race and a lot of folks who were going to stay on for the bands and fireworks. The chances the perpetrator was hanging around making threats within earshot are slim to none.”
“You mean it’s unheard of for someone intending murder to follow his victim around? Keep an eye on him? Scout out the best place to do it?”
Lyle looked at Russ and shrugged. “She’s got a point.”
Russ pinched the bridge of his nose. “She always has a point, trust me. Maybe we are looking at a premeditated murder.”
“Which would mean it’s tied in with the two other assaults,” Clare interjected.
“Which would mean no such thing,” Russ said, speaking more loudly. “We don’t have any indication the attacks on Emil Dvorak and Todd MacPherson were planned. In fact, they seem to be pretty clearly crimes of opportunity. Which would argue that if this murder is connected to the previous assaults, it’s more likely to have happened spontaneously as part of a pickup.”
“Why would Bill Ingraham come to a cold, wet park for sex?” she asked. “He’s staying in a comfortable inn run by hosts who wouldn’t blink no matter what guy he brought home with him.”
“Why do guys get trussed up in leather and let someone walk all over them with spike heels? I don’t know! That’s how they get their jollies!”
Lyle broke in: “This is getting real interesting, but if you want to see what Doc Scheeler finds, we’d better get over there now. I get a feeling the body could be bagged and slabbed before you two finish up.”
Russ sighed. He grasped Clare’s upper arms and gave her an imperceptible shake. “I don’t want you walking back to the rectory alone,” he said. “You understand? Stay here and I’ll get someone to take you home.”
“Yes, I understand,” she said, a tinge of exasperation coloring her voice: “Believe me, I don’t have any desire to go wandering off by my lonesome in the dark. Even with these two tagging along.” She glanced down at the Berns, who had risen when Clare had and now stood leaning their broad heads against her blotchy sweatpants.
“Okay.” He released her and strode toward the center of activity, Lyle matching his steps.
“You really think this might be unrelated to the previous assaults?” Lyle asked, pausing before the bushes to put his latex gloves back on.
“No.” Russ tried to tug his gloves on too quickly and got his fingers stuck. He wiggled them partway off and eased them on more carefully. “I don’t believe in coincidences. I think he was targeted. What I want to know is how.” He held an armful of wet spiny-leafed branches out of the way. He and Lyle stepped into the now partially cleared opening where Sergeant Morin and Dr. Scheeler crouched over the body in the trough.
Scheeler glanced up and nodded at Lyle. “Deputy MacAuley. And you must be…”
“Russ Van Alstyne. Chief of police. Whaddya have there?”
The medical examiner gestured with a long probe. “By the temperature, I’m going to say he died within the last two hours. There’s not enough water in here to change his lividity much. You don’t see this very often.” He delicately traced along what used to be Bill Ingraham’s neck. “Cut right through almost to the spine. He must have bled out almost instantly.”
“We were thinking a garrote.”
“Yes, I think you may be right. I’ll need to examine the edges under the microscope, of course, but it doesn’t have the shape characteristic of a knife cut.” The dead man’s hands were already encased in opaque Baggies to preserve possible unseen skin samples trapped under the fingernails. Scheeler slid a probe under one of the plastic-wrapped hands and lifted it slightly. “He had no lacerations or defensive marks here. You’d expect to see those if someone had been coming at him with a knife.” He removed the probe and lightly touched several places on the face. “And see here, and here, where the bruises are? I can’t be sure until I can examine the bone underneath, but I think he was beaten after he was dead.”
“After?” Lyle said.
“The bruises are flat, hardly diffuse at all. There’s been no swelling. Swelling happens fairly quickly to tissue while it’s alive, but it slows down markedly postmortem. I suspect he was killed quickly and then beaten.”
“Uncontrolled rage?” Lyle asked, raising his thick eyebrows at Russ.
“Or he wanted it to look like the other beatings,” Russ said. “It was a he, wasn’t it? It takes a hell of a lot of upper-body strength to pull a wire through someone’s throat.”
“Absolutely. I suppose a particularly muscular woman might have been able to accomplish the feat, but I’d lay my money on an adult male. And the wire or fishing line he used must have either been wrapped around something sturdy he could hold on to or—”
“He wore gloves,” Lyle said, completing the thought. “That’s something I’d like to find.”
“If the glove fits, you must convict,” Russ misquoted. “Can you confirm it was done here, Doc?”
“Oh, yes.” Dr. Scheeler pointed to the edge of the trough, where blood was congealing to the consistency of skim on a pudding. “There’s no doubt in my mind that he was alive when he walked in here. Once he’s in the lab, I may be able to see some markings that will tell me if he was coerced or not,” he added, forestalling Russ’s next question. The doctor unfolded himself from his crouch and stood, snapping his gloves off and pocketing them. “I’m done with the in situ examination. I should have the preliminary report to you within twenty-four hours. Toxicology will take longer—the state lab has been backed up.”
Russ peeled his gloves off and shook the medical examiner’s hand. “Thanks for getting out here so promptly.”
“It’s good to work with you. I’m just sorry it had to be under these circumstances. I know Emil Dvorak well. He’s a fine pathologist. Damned shame.”
They exited the small copse, and Russ waved the mortuary boys over to do their job. “We need to extend the tape all along here,” he said to Lyle, his arm swinging wide. “I want this line of brush gone over from the little gate down to the riverbank as soon as it’s daylight. He left one way or the other, dripping blood, maybe shucking gloves. There’s got to be something.” He caught sight of Clare, still sitting beneath a tree with the dogs. “And I need to figure out how to get Reverend Fergusson home.”
“What’s going on with you two?” Lyle asked, his voice neutral.
“Whaddya mean ‘what’s going on’? Nothing. I’m a happily married man.”
“So was I,” Lyle said. “Until I wasn’t anymore.”
Russ’s reply was cut off by a gleeful crow from Sergeant Morin, who emerged from the thicket ahead of the two mortuary attendants. “Take a look at what was under the body,” he said loudly. A damp and bloodstained piece of paper dangled between Morin’s latex-covered fingers. The tungsten lights seared the paper, popping the black lettering off the page so that even from several feet away, Russ could see the boldfaced heading: STOP BWI DEVELOPMENT NOW!
Chapter Eleven
Russ closed his eyes for a moment, but the overly illuminated image of the bloody paper was there, too. “Okay,” he said, “bag it. Maybe we’ll luck out and there will be usable prints.”
Lyle sidled closer. “Your mom is still in the county lockup, right?” When Russ rounded on him, teeth bared, the deputy chief held up both hands in mock surrender. “Just kidding! Just kidding!”
Russ grunted. “You are. Whoever thinks it next won’t be. Christ, this is all I need—someone thinking I have a personal stake in the outcome of a murder investigation.”
“Oh, come on. In the first place, who’s gonna believe one of your mom’s tree-hugging friends slit Ingraham’s throat? And it’s not as if you’ve coddled them. Trust me, slinging your own mother’s butt in jail showed the world you are an incorruptible cop.”
Russ looked at him. “Thank you, Officer Friday. Now, let’s wrap up this scene and get the gawkers out of here.” He shaded his eyes against the glare of the lights and squinted toward the dwindling crowd. “Looks like Durkee has finished taking names. Get him to run the tape down to the water.” He looked at his watch. “Glens Falls Dispatch is taking our calls right now. I’m going to get them to buzz Davies and McCrea at home to let them know to come straight here when their shifts start tomorrow morning. I want you here, too.”
“That’ll put me on—”
“Overtime. I know, I know. Be here anyway.”
The slither of tires on grass and the bounce of a new set of lights made him look away. The Channel 6 news van was pulling up, just in time to get the story taped for the eleven o’clock broadcast. He shook his head. Dealing with the press was his second-least-favorite part of the job, surpassed only by presenting the department’s budget to the Board of Aldermen.
A pretty young blonde who looked more like a kindergarten teacher than a reporter slipped out of the van, followed by a gorilla of a cameraman loaded down with what must have been sixty pounds of equipment. They conferred for a minute. From the way their arms were moving, they were figuring out what he was going to shoot. Then the gorilla caught sight of Russ and Lyle and pointed at them. The reporter ducked under the tape and advanced on their position, trailed by her cameraman.
“You want me to deal with ’em?” Lyle asked. There were only two types of cops who liked talking to the press: ambitious politicians or frustrated performers. Lyle, who once told Russ he had wanted to be Buffalo Bob when he grew up, fell in the latter group. He could spin out a “No comment” into a twenty-minute story without ever letting on it was all puffed air.
“Naw, I’ll handle it. Just button this place up fast, okay? I want to be out of here before Channel Thirteen decides this is newsworthy enough to send over a van, too.” If it were a single news outfit here tonight, he would only have to appear on TV once. After the initial photo op at the crime scene, he could usually get away with commenting to reporters over the phone.
Lyle waved an acknowledgment as he headed off to collect Durkee. The reporter pulled up in front of him and stuck out her hand. “Sheena Bevin, WTYY News. You’re Chief Van Alstyne?” Her voice was that peculiar combination of melodious and strident that all television reporters seemed to have.
He started back toward the police line. “Yep.”
She smoothed her white shirt and tugged on something clipped under her navy windbreaker. It was a microphone in a holster, which she unspooled and extended toward him. Behind and to the left of her shoulder, the camera light blazed on. “Chief, the report we got was that there was a possible homicide here tonight. What can you tell us? Who’s the victim?”
He stopped next to the yellow tape, which was shivering in a barely perceptible wind. He hoped to hell the rain would hold off. Trying to search the stretch of brush in the dark was going to be impossible; finding anything in a downpour in the morning would only be marginally less so. “We’re not releasing the name of the victim until we’ve been able to notify any relatives.”
“So it was a homicide?” Her shining blond hair seemed to gleam in interest.
He held up his hands. “Let me put what information I can give you in the proper order. At approximately nine-thirty tonight, we received a call that one of the spectators at the fireworks here had found a body. Deputy Chief MacAuley and Officer Durkee responded. Upon arriving at the scene, they secured the area and sent for Sergeant Morin, a state police forensics technician, and Dr. Scheeler, our temporary medical examiner. The victim was a middle-aged white male who was killed within an hour or so of the start of the fireworks. We are actively pursuing leads, and if anyone in the vicinity saw anything suspicious, we ask that they report it to the Millers Kill Police Department.”
“How was the victim killed?”
“I can’t release that at this time.”
“Do you have any significant evidence? Any suspects?”
“Dr. Scheeler believes there may be some excellent forensic evidence once he’s had a chance to examine the body.” The doctor hadn’t actually said that, but in Russ’s experience, all pathologists were sure they’d find something if they looked hard enough. “We have no suspects at the moment.”
“Thank you, Chief.” The camera light went out and she said, “Thanks a lot,” in a more natural voice. “We want to get some establishing shots and some reactions from the witnesses. Do you mind?”
It was a pro forma question, since he didn’t have the authority to stop the press, but he appreciated the courtesy. “Just make sure you don’t cross the line. We’re still securing the scene.”
“Will do. Matt, let’s go.” There was a clunk of metal hitting metal as the gorilla shouldered his camera and followed her.
Russ ducked under the tape and jogged to his cruiser, popping open the door to reach the radio. He watched the mortuary assistants leaving the thicket. The bag boys— Lyle’s name for them—picked their way through the brush, careful not to dislodge the contents of their pallet. The mound of shiny black plastic suddenly made Russ think of the fat blood sausages his grandmother Campbell used to urge on him. The image made his stomach churn. The Channel 6 cameraman was following the body’s progress from the brush to the back of the van.
Russ gave his instructions to one of the Glens Falls dispatchers who handled Millers Kill 911 calls between 10:00P.M. and 6:00 A.M. Sheena Bevin was working her way through the remaining spectators, asking questions, occasionally pulling out the little microphone. He finished up with the Glens Falls dispatcher and headed over to help Lyle and Durkee finish up.
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