All Mortal Flesh

TWENTY-SIX

There was a blur-balding, big, dark mustache, arms braced like a line-backer. Russ clawed for his gun. The man smacked into his chest. Russ went over, crashing against the stairs, flipping ass over teakettle, his shout of “Stop! Police!” converted into an inarticulate yell that became a scream as he smashed his knee into a step and kept rolling, bouncing, thudding downstairs.

His assailant leaped over him, leaped on him, his boot driving whatever breath Russ had left out of his lungs. His glasses went flying, and the edges of his sight darkened as his chest heaved for air. He thudded to a stop at the foot of the stairs. The man wrenched the front door open, smashing it into Russ’s hip, and disappeared as Russ lay there shuddering, gasping for oxygen, every part of his body in pain.

Then he heard the car engine starting up.

“Shit,” he wheezed, staggering to his feet. It felt like someone had taken an ax to his kneecap. The world was a blur. He looked frantically around the living room floor. A glint of gold tipped him off, and he lunged for his glasses. His surroundings snapped into focus again. He limped onto the enclosed porch just in time to see his Volvo station wagon fishtailing out of the drive.

“Shit!” He started to run, but a sharp pain fetched him up. Christ, between landing on his gun and the blow from the door, he probably had nerve damage in his hip. He dug for his cell phone as he limped toward the Honda Civic. Had he seen keys in the ignition? No, he had not.

“Shit!” He spun around. From down the road, below the rise where the Keane house stood, he heard the screech of brakes and the rubber-stripping squeal of tire against asphalt. Then the crash.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” He gimped down the drive as fast as possible, slipping and sliding on the rock-hard snow, trying to ignore the stabbing pain in his knee and hip. Bainbridge Road’s shoulder was packed with gritty dirt-and salt-crusted snowbanks, so he took to the dry middle of the pavement, praying no one would come bombing along over the ridge.

He heard an engine starting up again. Something-a yell? A car gunned. Accelerated. Back up the ridge. Toward him.

He didn’t waste time swearing at this latest shitstorm. Russ flung himself over the filthy snowbank and scrambled on fingers and toes away from the road. The crumpled front end of the Volvo, Linda’s Volvo, roared past him, broken headlights spattering glass in its wake. Russ swarmed over the hard-shelled snow, back to the road, back toward the angry shouting he could hear drifting up from the base of the hill.

Limping over the ridge crest, he could see the other party to the accident, a tall young man with hair shaved so short all Russ could make out was the pink of his scalp. He was stomping back and forth in front of what must have been a fine-looking Camaro before the rear quarter had been smashed in, cussing in a way that made up in sheer filthiness what it lacked in originality.

“Hey!” Russ shouted, and the young man turned, his fists ready, his teeth bared. Russ held up his hands. “It wasn’t me!” He limped closer.

The young man dropped his hands. “Chief Van Alstyne?”

Russ squinted. “Ethan? Ethan Stoner?” He hadn’t seen the Stoners’ oldest since about a year back, after the boy had finished up community service for a piece of trouble he had been involved in. He sure hadn’t had a buzz cut and a car back then.

“Yes, sir, it’s me.”

Sir? Ethan wasn’t a mean kid-Russ always figured his problems arose from too much leisure and not enough opportunity-but he also wasn’t the sort to sir and ma’am his elders. Russ finally reached the boy and his brutalized car. “What happened?”

“Are you all right, sir?”

Russ raised an eyebrow. It hurt. “Just banged up a bit. Courtesy the same guy who just totaled your car. What happened?”

Ethan pointed toward a driveway entrance down a few yards and across the road. “I was visiting the McAlistairs.” Way back through the field, some half mile from the road, the drive ended in a graceful old farmhouse. “I had just pulled out onto the road-I was going slow, Chief, really I was. I know you have to be extra careful right below the hill.”

Russ nodded. “I believe you.”

“Anyway, this asshole comes sailing over the top of the hill and bam! Before I could get out of the way, he nails the rear of my car.” Ethan looked mournfully at the vehicle. “Man, I still got two years of payments to make on this thing.”

Russ sighed. “Don’t worry. The Volvo he was driving was well insured.”

“If I get my hands on the jerk, he better pray he’s got good medical insurance.”

Russ fished his cell phone from his pocket. At least he wasn’t going to have to worry about getting a warrant now. He dialed the dispatch number.

“Millers Kill Police Department.”

“Harlene? It’s Russ.”

“Chief! Where have you been? I’ve been calling all over for you!” Harlene dropped her voice. “That rhymes-with-witch from the state PD has been carrying on like you escaped from custody.”

“I’m on Bainbridge Road, in Cossayuharie.” He glanced toward the McAlistairs’ farm. Two people were hurrying down the long drive.

“We’ve just got an accident report from there. Hit-and-run. One Scotty McAlistair called it in. Kevin’s responding.”

“We’ll need more people than Officer Flynn. I want a crime scene workup at 840 Bainbridge Road. That’s just up the hill from the McAlistairs. And that hit-and-run? Assaulted an officer and stole his personal vehicle.”

“You and yours?”

“That’s right. I want an APB on him, male, Cauc, balding, black or dark brown Fu Manchu mustache. Middle-aged, medium height. He’s in a 1993 dark green Volvo wagon, New York plate number RYF 3050. He’s got damage to the grill and headlights.”

“Are you all right? Shall I send an ambulance?”

“I’m okay.” He held the phone away from his ear. “Ethan. How are you feeling? Do you need to have anybody take a look at you?”

“Nah,” Ethan said. “I got smacked up worse in Parris Island.”

Parris Island. So that explained the bald eagle hairdo. “We’re all good here, Harlene. When you bulletin this perp, make sure you add he’s wanted for questioning related to a homicide.”

“He is?”

The hurrying figures reached the road. A farmer in his forties, knit hat framing a red, weather-beaten face, and a curvy little girl Ethan’s age who launched herself into the boy’s arms.

“I gotta go, Harlene. I’ll fill you in later.” Russ clicked off the phone.

“Are you all right?” the girl said, high-pitched and breathless. “Daddy called the police. I saw the whole thing. He just drove right into you! I swear, for a moment, I thought-I was terrified…” She buried her face in Ethan’s parka and sort of quivered, which, Russ judged, must feel pretty good, even through two layers of down and Gore-Tex. Ethan’s cheeks pinked up. He tried to school his gratified expression into something more concerned.

“You okay, Ethan?” The farmer ignored his daughter’s theatrics in favor of an assessing look at the boy.

“Yessir. He did a number on my car, though.”

“Cars can be replaced.” The farmer frowned at Russ. “You the guy responsible?”

“No, sir, he didn’t have nothing-anything to do with it. This is Chief Van Alstyne. Chief of police.”

The farmer held out his gloved hand. “Scotty McAlistair. You’re fast. I only just called nine-one-one.”

“I was already here. The man who ran into Ethan was fleeing custody.” He thumbed up the hill, toward McAlistair’s neighbor’s house. “What do you know about Audrey Keane?”

“Audrey Keane?” McAlistair looked surprised. “Not much. She moved in a couple, three years ago. The house was empty for a year after old Mrs. Williamson died.”

“Does she live alone?”

“I think so-”

His daughter cut in. “Not anymore.”

“This is my oldest, Christy,” McAlistair said. “Christy, don’t interrupt when grown-ups are talking.”

“Daddy!”

Russ held up his hand. “I’d like to hear. You say Ms. Keane doesn’t live alone anymore?”

She nodded, her cheek making a whispery noise against Ethan’s jacket. “Since about October. There’s been a man living there, too. First he was driving, like, a white Buick, then I started seeing him in her car.”

“Balding guy? Mustache?”

She nodded again.

“Do you know anything else about him, Christy? Or about her?”

“Not really. We said hi a few times at the IGA. She was always nice. Not, like, pushy or anything. But nice.”

Russ glanced at the father. “Do you know what she did for a living?”

McAlistair shook his head. “She was quiet. She didn’t go out much, and she didn’t have many folks over, as I could tell.”

“Not even since October? When this man came to live with her?”

“Nope.”

That cut down on the possibility that she was dealing.

“Sometimes she’d go away for days,” Christy said. “Like, over a long weekend, or for a week.”

He tried to fit that together with the computers. Porn? Procurement? Maybe she was just a fanatic eBayer.

“When was the last time either of you saw her?”

“Ummm,” McAlistair said.

“Friday,” Christy said. “I saw her drive past in her car. Her and the guy with the mustache.”

“You see a lot.”

She flushed. “I babysit the Montgomery boys afternoons. They always want to play outside. So I spend, like, a lot of time in their front yard.”

A siren’s shriek cut through the heavy, cold air. Christy McAlistair shivered.

“That’ll be Officer Flynn, to take your report,” Russ said to Ethan. “Thank you for the information,” he said to the farmer.

“Welcome. Sorry I didn’t have any more.” He touched his daughter’s shoulder. “C’mon, Christy. Let’s wait inside and let Ethan finish his business with the police.”

“I’ll come in as soon as I’m done,” Ethan promised the girl. She reluctantly released him and followed her father up the long, rutted drive.

“So,” Russ said. “You signed on with the marines.”

Ethan straightened. “Yessir.”

“I’m surprised. Pleased, but surprised. I figured the closest you’d get to fighting was Death Match 3000 at All TechTronik.”

The young man flushed. “I had sort of a wake-up call. Between Katie’s death”-his high school girlfriend, killed over two years ago now-“and September 11, I realized nobody knows how long they got. And I thought, do I want to piss my life away working part-time at Stewart’s and helping my dad steam-clean the milking equipment?” He ducked his head. “I can’t blame you for being surprised and all. I was pretty wild for a while there.”

Russ thought of himself at eighteen, two years younger than Ethan was now. Drinking and getting stoned and pulling stupid pranks. Desperate to get away. “Are they sending you over?”

Ethan glowed. “Oh, man, I hope so. I’m going for further training soon as I get back. Sniper school. That must mean I’ll be seeing action, don’tcha think?”

“I’d think so, yeah.” Had he really ever been that young? Yes, he had. He had been chomping at the bit to get to Vietnam. God, boys were stupid. In his day, the town’s chief of police had said good-bye and wished him well. Probably wondering, like Russ was now, if he’d ever see that wild young man again. Certainly never imagining that one day Russ would be standing in his shoes, wearing his badge.

Crimson lights splashed over the top of the far hill. Kevin Flynn’s squad car. Russ smiled a little. Maybe thirty-some years from now, Chief Ethan Stoner would be watching over Millers Kill. He laid a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Take care of yourself. Come back safe to us.”

Ethan gave him a look of disbelief. Russ wasn’t sure if it was for the idea that anything might happen to him, or the idea that he might make his way back to Millers Kill once he had escaped it. “Hey, I thought of another thing about Audrey Keane,” he said. “I’ve seen her around a time or two since she moved out here. I didn’t want to mention it in front of Christy and all, but have you seen a picture of her?”

“I don’t know. I saw a bunch of pictures up in her house. Maybe.”

“You’d know it if you had. She’s a total babe. I mean, I know she’s old and all, but she’s hot. I was thinking, when Christy said about her going away and all? She might have been going with guys. If you know what I mean.”

“You think she might have been working as a prostitute?” How would that fit in with three computers and a fleeing boyfriend? Internet dating? Meeting men and rolling them?

Ethan shrugged. “I dunno.” He rubbed his nonexistent hair. “I’m just saying, she may be my mom’s age, but she sure didn’t look nothing like my mom.”