All Mortal Flesh

FIFTY-ONE

Ironically (she thought later, when she began to be able to think about it), it was Quinn Tracey, not Russ Van Alstyne, who saved her from descending into a paralysis of guilt and horror. Over Russ’s voice, soothing and supporting her, she heard another gasping rattle.

“He’s not dead yet,” she said idiotically, replaying the Monty Python joke.

“He is, darlin’. I’m sorry, but it was him or me, and he’s dead and I’m not.”

She pushed against Russ’s solidity. “Not… him.” She couldn’t say his name. “Quinn.”

He wasn’t. Russ stayed with him, compressing his wound, because he was heavier. Clare went back outside and stood in the road, buffed and battered by the wind and snow until she felt scoured raw and she saw the headlights of what turned out to be Kevin Flynn’s cruiser. Noble Entwhistle was right behind him, and, thank God, a Glens Falls ambulance that Harlene had diverted. She showed them where to go and then retreated to her car. She turned the heater on full blast and listened to Tal Bachman’s melancholy voice: “I was there all the time-even I couldn’t find me. So how did you see? What made you believe?” She refused to think of anything. She leaked tears. After a while she achieved a passable state of numbness.

Then the passenger-side door opened and Russ climbed in. He slammed the door shut behind him and looked at her. He touched her jaw with fingers as light as a drift of snow. “You should get in the ambulance and let them take you to the hospital. You ought to have that checked out.”

She shook her head. “Nothing broken. I didn’t lose any teeth.”

“Clare-”

“Hold me,” she said, her voice breaking despite herself. “Please.”

He leaned toward her and gathered her in an embrace. He rocked her awkwardly over the stick shift while she cried. When she had wrung all the salt out of her body and her face was hot and puffy, she sat back. He let her go but kept hold of her hand. He rubbed her knuckles with his thumb. “Holding on,” he said.

“Not letting go.” She smiled a watery smile. “Hey, we’re talking. Our lawyers won’t be very happy.”

“Like I was ever going to listen to what Geoff Burns said.”

Her smile faded away. “Tell me something good. Please.”

“Dennis Shambaugh’s in custody. Jensen’s gone to Loudonville to interview him. Kevin says that Harlene says that the Loudonville dispatcher says that Shambaugh didn’t even know his wife was dead until the news broke in the paper. Supposedly he went back to our house to pick her up, saw all the cop cars, and kept on going. He was waiting around to hear from her when I showed up.”

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes.

“I don’t know how good you’ll think this is.”

His tone of voice tipped her off. She looked at him. “You’ve found out where Linda is.”

“More like she found me.” He shook his head and huffed half a laugh. “She showed up at the Algonquin right after I finished turning the place upside down looking for her. Turns out she had gone to St. Croix, courtesy of John Opperman.”

“And he finally gets revenge on you for destroying his helicopter.”

“I was just along for the ride. You were flying it.”

She squeezed his hand hard. “I’m glad she’s back. And I’m truly, truly happy she’s alive and well. I want you to be happy. More than anything, I want you to be happy.” Her voice was quavering, so she shut up.

“I want that for you, too, love.”

She drew her hand out of his and laid it in her lap. Looked at both her hands. Hands she used to greet parishioners, soothe the sick, comfort the mourning. Hands that cradled the holy mysteries of the Eucharist. “I’ve killed a man,” she said. “With these hands, I killed a man. How can I hold the body and blood of Jesus in these hands?”

He reached over the stick shift and enfolded her hands in his own. “I love your hands,” he said.

She shook her head.

“I love you,” he said.

She hiccupped a laugh. “Let’s not start that again.”

He didn’t let go. “I’m going to have some sorting out to do. Linda’s royally ripped at me.”

That was enough to distract her from her failings. “She was the one who left without a word. How can she be mad at you?”

“She was with me when I got Harlene’s message about you being here. She heard every word. Told me that if I left her sitting in the truck cooling her heels while I swanned off to rescue you, she was leaving with her sister. I wouldn’t back down, so off they went.”

“Oh, God.” Clare leaned forward and bumped her head against the steering wheel. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. I told her, it was police business.”

She looked at him. “Uh-huh.”

“I was driving right by here on my way to Mom’s.”

“So you had to stop right after she reappeared from the dead? And you would have done the same if it had been, say, Ben Beagle from the Post-Star who was chasing down Quinn Tracey?”

“Well…” He shifted in his seat. “Maybe I would have taken her and Debbie home and then come back. But I would have come back.”

A shape loomed out of the gathering dark and rapped on her window. She unrolled it to reveal Kevin Flynn’s eternally cheerful face. “Glad to see you safe and sound, ma’am!”

“Thanks, Kevin.”

“Chief, we’ve secured the scene in case the CS guys want to look it over, but we’ve got to make tracks. There’s been a bad accident on Route 57, and they’re calling everybody in. Crap weather. This’ll be the fourth accident I’ve responded to today.”

“We’ll follow you,” Russ said, leaning over Clare. “We have to go that way to get Reverend Fergusson home. You can get us past the tie-up.”

Clare turned to him. “We?”

“I’m driving you home.” His tone did not invite debate.

“Oh,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Then I’m going to borrow your car. I gave mine to the woman who was with you.”

“My new deacon.” She didn’t want to think about how today’s events would affect her standing in the diocese. And she couldn’t think, yet, about how they would affect her ability to pastor. “You may be in luck. She’s probably back at St. Alban’s, typing up a report to the bishop.”

They traded places. Clare sat back, happy to leave the difficult task of driving through a snowstorm to someone vastly more experienced. She kept quiet, letting Russ concentrate on staying on the road, letting herself be hypnotized by the snow whirling out of the darkness into the headlights’ beam.

“Kevin’s right,” Russ said, his voice strained. “This is crap weather.” He sighed. “I was going to head over to Debbie’s hotel, but I guess I better report in at the station instead.”

“Aren’t you still suspended?”

He grinned in a way that made Aaron MacEntyre’s words echo in her head. I have you pegged as a wolf. “With Quinn Tracey in the hospital waiting to confess all? Just let Jensen try to keep my badge from me. Her and her extra e. Hah.”

“Is he going to be okay, do you think? I mean, healthwise?”

“Tracey? Yeah. He had a punctured lung, but the paramedics were pretty optimistic. Being seventeen helps.”

“Do you think he’ll get charged as an adult?”

“Dunno. Depends on what we can uncover about MacEntyre. I didn’t know him very long, but he sure struck me as a casebook sociopath. Tracey’s lawyers’ll probably have a pretty good argument that MacEntyre led their client down the road to hell.”

“I met him before. That day you asked me to find out-” She shook her head. “Yesterday. It was yesterday. It feels like a year ago. Anyway, I’m just realizing that when he was talking with me and his mother, it was all ‘like’ and seem’ about him. As if everything he did, every human interaction, was a performance.” She shuddered.

“You don’t need to talk about this,” he said quietly.

“Sooner or later I do.”

“No,” he said. His voice was firm. “You don’t.” He glanced away from the road for a second. “I didn’t go into any details about what happened with Flynn and Noble Entwhistle. I said MacEntyre was threatening our lives, and that he’d been killed. As the responding officer, I’m going to write up the official report. I can make it so that I did it.”

She sat, silent for a moment. Thinking about changing history with a few keystrokes. “Thank you,” she finally said. She smiled a little. “I love you for making the offer. But I can’t accept.”

He snorted. “Kind of thought you’d say that.”

Ahead of them, Flynn’s cruiser’s brake lights flared red. Russ stepped on the brakes, muttering something under his breath that Clare figured she didn’t want to hear. The Subaru fishtailed. “Hang on,” he said, steering them into the skid. He got control of the car, and they slowly inched forward, following Flynn, who had turned on his red-and-whites. Emerging out of the darkness, they could see flares, and the whirling lights of squad cars and tow trucks and emergency vehicles, and then the intersection. A truck had T-boned a small car, crumpling it around the Peterbilt grille like a wet napkin draped over a fist.

Clare crossed herself, then folded her hands against her mouth. Dear Lord God, she prayed, show Your mercy to all whose lives will be changed tonight.

“Wait,” Russ said. He slowed even more. “Wait.” He pulled off the road. She thought. It was hard to tell.

She was about to ask if he was needed when he opened the door. In the overhead light, his face was a death mask. He slipped out, slamming the door behind him.

Alarmed, she tugged her hat and gloves on and followed him. In the blur of the storm, the rescuers and responders were anonymous, bulky figures in parkas and rip-stop pants, their faces hidden behind skin-saving balaclavas. She lost Russ immediately. She headed toward the accident, where brilliant halogen lights cut through the snow’s unending assault.

“Hey!” A masked figure caught at her sleeve. “No one allowed in there, sorry.”

She pushed her hat back and her parka collar down.

“Oh! Reverend Fergusson!” The man let go of her sleeve and peeled his balaclava away. It was Duane, an EMT and one of Russ’s part-time officers. “I’m afraid they don’t have any need of you now, Reverend.” He raised his voice to be heard above the wind. “Better say your prayers for the rest of us, that we don’t get frostbite sortin’ this mess out. It’s ugly.”

“What happened?”

“Rental car skidded through the red light right into the path of the eighteen-wheeler. The driver says he tried to stop, but… He’s pretty shook up.”

“He’s okay?”

“Oh, yeah. It’s the other two that bought it.”

A sick and terrible weight ballooned in the pit of her stomach. “I have to get in there,” she said.

Duane shrugged. “Stay out of the way,” he advised. Clare skirted an ambulance-sitting there, both EMTs waiting patiently in the cab, no rush to the hospital for them-and sloshed through a well-churned morass of snow toward the accident.

Four members of the Millers Kill volunteer fire department were attacking the remnants of the car with torches. Cutting away the tortured metal to take out what was left inside. Two fire trucks flanked the scene.

“Russ!” she yelled. She skirted the edges of the light. “Russ!”

A firefighter crossed in front of her, toting a rolled hose. “Excuse me,” she shouted. “Have you seen Chief Van Alstyne?” The man-woman?-paused, then pointed to the other end of the intersection.

Clare hurried, slipping and sliding, dodging cops and firefighters, rushing, the panic and dread growing, frantic to find Russ and not wanting to see him at all.

She spotted him standing apart from anyone else. He was facing the remains of the car head-on. The closer she got, the more slowly she walked, until she was too close not to see his face.

Then she knew.

“They…” he said, in a voice that had aged a century. “They…” He pointed to the intersection. “You can see. From the tracks.” She looked. Whatever he saw in the patterns in the snow was unintelligible to her. “And… from the angle. They were coming back.”

She didn’t want to see him like this. She didn’t want to ever see such pain in anyone’s eyes ever again. If it had been within her power, she would have switched places with the woman in the passenger seat. Just to erase what she saw when she looked at him.

“They were coming back. The hotel. Was that way. They were coming back.” He stared at Clare. “And I-” His voice cracked, and he crumpled beneath an enormous cry that tore out of his chest. “Oh, God! What I said to her!”

Clare stepped forward, opening her arms, offering whatever she had.

He turned away.

He stood there, in the snow and the light and the darkness, drowning with the first bitter waters of grief, and she waited, and she waited, until she realized he wasn’t going to turn to her. Ever. She stepped back. She stepped back. She stepped back and back, out of the light, past the fire trucks and the EMTs and the squad cars, until she had vanished into the storm.

And she was lost again.

Midway this way of life we’re bound upon, I woke to find myself in a dark wood, Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.