All Mortal Flesh

THIRTY-TWO

When he joined the force with the ink still wet on his criminal justice degree, Mark Durkee had expected some bad moments. He envisioned nighttime stops, walking up to the driver’s window never knowing if the person inside the car was armed, enraged, lunatic. He envisioned facing down the barrel of a gun. He envisioned having to take down guys who were bigger, stronger, and meaner than he was. He sometimes envisioned himself wounded (although ostomy bags, brain damage, or having his good looks destroyed never figured in these fantasies), bearing up under the admiring gaze of his brother officers and his weeping fiancée. (Six years on, the fiancée was his wife, who by that time had seen so many brutal injuries as a trauma nurse that she wouldn’t have wept if it had been her own mother on the crash cart.)

The things he didn’t envision: the interminable boredom of working the radar gun. Having to shoot a dog. (Its owner, who had almost two acres in marijuana, sicced it on Mark while trying to escape.) Telling middle-aged parents their daughter had died in a one-car crash coming home from Rensselaer Polytech. Being shunned by his brother officers for opening their department to the pitiless gaze of the BCI’s External Law Enforcement investigator. Shut out from the work of going back through the phone records and the bills and Dennis Shambaugh’s history, but unable to walk away. Useless, friendless, watching through a two-way mirror while his chief sat through an interrogation, unarmed and without a badge, in his own station house.

“We know your wife was killed sometime between Sunday afternoon and Monday afternoon,” Jensen was saying. “You were seen buying groceries Sunday right after the IGA opened at noon. After that, you don’t reappear anywhere in public until close to five o’clock on Monday, when Officer Durkee picked you up, also at the IGA.”

“My wife is not dead,” the chief said for the hundredth time.

“We know where you weren’t. You weren’t at your mother’s. Her neighbor across the way noticed her driveway was empty when he walked his dog after the eleven o’clock news.” The chief glared up at her. “Yeah, I had your man Entwhistle over there checking things out,” she said. “Funny how you and your deputy chief didn’t bother to confirm your alibi. Or maybe not. Seeing as you’re such”-she leaned over the table, her hands spread flat-“intimate friends.”

The chief’s face scared Mark. For a moment, he looked as though he might tear the leg off the table and beat Jensen to death with it. For the first time, for only a moment, Mark felt his faith flicker. What if… Could he possibly have…?

“The neighbor also says your mother’s drive was empty, and the snow undisturbed, when he walked the dog before leaving for work Monday morning.”

“My wife isn’t dead,” the chief gritted.

“Did you know your mother lied for you?”

His head jerked up. Mark winced. Margy Van Alstyne had bustled into the station, angry and defensive, demanding the release of her son. As soon as Investigator Jensen started probing for information, Mrs. Van Alstyne swore the chief had been at her house all Sunday and Monday, too. Jensen had smiled like a woman getting a mink for Christmas and thanked her before regretfully refusing to let her see the chief. Mrs. Van Alstyne hadn’t wasted any time fuming. She had hightailed it out of the station, headed, Mark guessed, for either a lawyer’s office or a gun shop.

“For chrissakes,” the chief said. “Just get Emil Dvorak on the phone and see if there are any fingerprints in the woman’s autopsy file!”

“According to the secretary at the pathology department, Dr. Dvorak is in Albany today, seeing his neuropsychiatrist. I understand he has a head injury he needs to follow up on regularly.” Jensen rubbed her hairline in the same place where the medical examiner’s scar split his forehead in two. “And to tell you the truth, I’m a little leery of testimony from an ME who’s not only a personal friend of yours but who’s brain damaged as well.”

“God damn you.” The chief braced his elbow against the table and pressed his fist against his mouth. “My wife,” he finally said, “isn’t dead. You can send somebody over to Kilmer’s Funeral Home and print the body right there, for God’s sake.”

In fact, Jensen had directed the crime scene technician, Sergeant Morin, to head over to Kilmer’s as soon as he finished with the Keane house. The BCI investigator might not have believed the chief’s assertions, but she wasn’t stupid. Mark waited for her to tell the chief, but she simply hung over him, her face as professionally sorrowful as a funeral director’s.

“Russ,” she said. “You have to help me here. Now maybe, as you say, it wasn’t you who killed your wife. Maybe it was one of her lovers. From what I’ve heard already, it sounds like she enjoyed whoring around with the best of-”

The chief came out of his chair so fast that Mark, watching through the observation window, jerked away involuntarily. Jensen stood her ground, her chin out, her mouth curved in a knowing smile.

“You bitch,” the chief growled. His hands were clenched into fists. Mark could see the pulse in his neck. “When we get through with this I’m gonna-”

A racket from down the hall buried the chief’s words. Mark was grateful. He didn’t want to hear that threat. He didn’t want to feel what he did now, the wavering, sick, maybe-could-he running through his nervous system.

It sounded like it was coming from the squad room or Harlene’s dispatch center, a cacophony of angry voices, male and female, and Harlene calling for Lyle and the thud of running feet.

Noble burst out of the door and trotted down the hall. He unlocked the interrogation room door without glancing at Mark. “Investigator Jensen!” he called. “You might want to get out here!”

She twitched with annoyance. “Can’t your deputy chief handle it?”

“Ma’am, I really think you want to get out here.”

Swearing under her breath, Jensen stalked from the room. “Durkee,” she said, catching sight of him. “You have the detainee.”

Mark’s mouth formed the word Me? But she had already swept up the hall, Noble hopping out of her way and hurrying to keep up with her.

Mark went to the door. The chief walked over. Looked up the hall. “What’s going on?”

“I dunno,” Mark said. He looked at his shoes. Shiny. Like always. He prided himself on being a spit-and-polish cop, his crease always sharp, his fade high and tight. Not like the chief, with his hair always in need of a trim and his beat-up old boots beneath unpressed trousers. He looked at those boots now. His throat felt hot and full. “Sir,” he said, “Investigator Jensen’s sent Sergeant Morin over to the funeral home. To… to get prints. I don’t know why she didn’t tell you.”

“She’s trying to get me mad enough to confess,” the chief said. His voice was almost clinical, as if he were passing along a point of law he picked up at a seminar. “I’ve probably conducted a thousand interrogations over the course of my career. Hard and soft, sitting in with men a lot more experienced than me and running them on my own. I know most of the techniques, and I know the number one rule, which is, if you don’t want anyone to have anything on you, shut the hell up. Jensen knows that I know, and she’s decided the way to get me to forget that sound piece of advice is to rattle my cage so bad I’ll break down the bars and take a swipe at her.”

“Is there… I mean…” Mark didn’t want to know, but he was compelled to ask. “Do you have something you don’t want her to know?”

The chief looked at him.

The babble of indistinct voices that had accompanied their talk suddenly sharpened. A woman shouted, “Russell! Russell!”

“That’s my mother,” the chief said, starting forward. Without thinking, Mark threw his arm across the door.

“You gonna keep me in here, Mark?” The chief’s voice was low. “You think I did it after all?”

“No, sir,” Mark said, because where would he be if it were true? He dropped his arm. The chief brushed past him and hiked up the hall.

Harlene’s dispatch center was jammed with people, cops and civilians alike. Lyle McAuley held Margy Van Alstyne by the shoulder as she listened, pink-faced and trembling, to something he said. That shyster Geoff Burns was in Jensen’s face-the first time Mark had ever been glad to see the obnoxious little prick. Noble stood behind the BCI investigator, imitating a wall. A bleached blonde in a ridiculously skimpy jacket wept with fury, mascara running black down her tan skin, while Kevin Flynn fussed around her, trapped between comforting her and staying the hell out of her way. And Eric McCrea was body-blocking a guy with a goofy tie and a notepad. “Oh, crap,” Mark said. He didn’t know the man’s name, but he recognized a reporter when he saw one.

“What the hell’s going on?” the chief said in a voice loud enough to stir the American flag in the front hall.

“Russell!” his mother said.

“Durkee!” Investigator Jensen looked like she wanted to rip him a new one.

Geoffrey Burns broke away from Jensen and shoved through the crowd to reach the chief’s side. “Don’t say another word until we’ve had a chance to talk,” he said. “I’m your attorney.”

“I don’t need a lawyer,” the chief said.

“Be smart for once in your life, Van Alstyne. Unless you’ve got your bunkmate all picked out at Clinton, you need a lawyer.”

“Fine,” the chief snapped. “I’ll call the bar association and ask for a referral.”

Burns butted up against the chief. His clipped, dark beard pointed accusingly at his would-be client’s chest. “I don’t like you any better than you like me, Van Alstyne. But I’m doing this as a favor to Clare. Do you want to be the one to tell her you turned down my representation?”

Mark could hear the chief’s teeth click, the hiss of his breath releasing. “No,” he said.

“Good.” Burns turned toward Jensen. “No more questions until I’ve had a chance to confer with my client,” he said.

“Russell.” Mrs. Van Alstyne waded toward them. “The man from the state police came to Kilmer’s-”

“They’re desecrating my sister’s body,” the bleached blonde said. Her voice shook with anger. “This bastard killed my sister and now he’s sending storm troopers over to pry open her coffin and… and…” She choked on tears and spittle.

“Goddammit, I didn’t kill your sister! That woman-”

“She says you can’t account for where you were!” the blonde screeched, slashing her finger toward Investigator Jensen. “For almost twenty-four hours! Twenty-four hours! My sister was killed! Where were you, you sanctimonious bastard? Where were you?”

“He was with me.” A woman’s voice, pitched to carry over the crowd. Heads turned. People pushed each other for a better view. The reporter pivoted, his face alight with interest.

“He was with me,” Clare Fergusson said. “He spent the night with me.”