In the Bleak Midwinter

OUTSTANDING PRAISE

FOR JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING’S

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER

“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

“Without ever slighting the central situation of the abandoned mother and her abandoned child, Spencer-Fleming shows admirable resourcefulness in the changes she brings to it.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Compelling . . . many twists.”

—Romantic Times

“Filled with many twists and turns . . . [a] warm tale.”

—Midwest Book Review

“The prose soars . . . the story twists and turns to the last page.”

—Maine Sunday Telegram

“Julia Spencer-Fleming is already a winner, but she deserves a triple crown. In a strong, distinctive voice, she sets her characters down In the Bleak Midwinter and pits them against public murder, personal demons, and the power of nature itself.”

—Kathy Lynn Emerson, author of the Face Down Mysteries

“One of the most impressive ‘first’ crime novels I’ve read. A priest, a cop, a baby on the doorstep, and a lot of snow combined with suspenseful results for one great book.”

—Charlaine Harris, author of Shakespeare’s Counselor

“Don’t miss this one! You’ll be rooting for Clare Fergusson in this engaging and vital mystery.”

—April Henry, author of the Claire Montrose mysteries and Learning to Fly

In the Bleak

Midwinter

Julia Spencer-Fleming

St. Martin’s Paperbacks

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

A FOUNTAIN FILLED WITH BLOOD

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER

Copyright © 2002 by Julia Spencer-Fleming.

Excerpt from A Fountain Filled with Blood © 2003 by Julia Spencer-Fleming.

Cover photograph © Ed Dimsdale/Photonica.

Hymn on page xi, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” from The Hymnal 1982, published by The Publishing Co.

Hymn on page 79, “The King Shall Come When Morning Dawns,” from The Hymnal 1982, published by The Publishing Co.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001051303

ISBN: 0-312-98676-9

Printed in the United States of America

St. Martin’s hardcover edition / March 2002

St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / March 2003

St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

–TO LESLIE–

WINTER MUST BE COLD FOR THOSE WITH NO WARM MEMORIES.

—DELMER DAVES AND LEO MCCARY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Ruth Cavin, Julie Sullivan, and everyone at St. Martin’s Press for making my first time so much fun, and thanks to Luci Zahray for discovering me. This book was immeasurably improved by the critiques of those who read it as a work-in-progress: Adele Hutchinson; my father, John Fleming; Karen Fletcher; Les Smith; and Anne Steele Zembala. I had expert help from the clergy of the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, Portland, Maine, and from Timothy J. LaMar, formerly of the U.S. Army Infantry, who took me shooting and explained what it sounds like when you bash in someone’s head with a rock. Thanks to my mother, Lois Fleming, my first and best writing instructor, editor, critic, and fan. Finally, thanks to my husband, Ross Hugo-Vidal, who went through everything but a plague of locusts during the writing of this book and lived to tell the tale.

IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER

LYRICS BY CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign;

In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed

The Lord God incarnate, Jesus Christ.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;

But his mother, in her maiden bliss,

Worshiped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a wise man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can give him: give him my heart.

CHAPTER 1

It was one hell of a night to throw away a baby. The cold pinched at Russ Van Alstyne’s nose and made him jam his hands deep into his coat pockets, grateful that the Washington County Hospital had a police parking spot just a few yards from the ER doors. A flare of red startled him, and he watched as an ambulance backed out of its bay silently, lights flashing. The driver leaned out of his window, craning to see his way between cement rails.

“Kurt! Hey! Anything for me?”

The driver waved at Russ. “Hey, Chief. Nope. Heart attack stabilized and heading for Glens Falls. You heard about the baby?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

Kurt continued to back out, almost to the end of the parking lot. “Jesum, hard to imagine sumpin’ like that here in Millers Kill—” The rest of his commentary was lost as he heeled the ambulance into the road. Russ waved, then pushed open the antiquated double doors to the emergency department.

His glasses fogged up within seconds in the moist heat of the foyer. He pulled off the wire frames and rubbed them with the end of his scarf, mentally cursing the myopia that had finally led him, at forty-eight, to cave in and wear the damn things full time. His stomach ached and his knee was bothering him and for a moment he wished he had taken that security consulting job in Phoenix like his wife had wanted.

“Hey! Chief!” A blurry form in brown approached him. Russ tucked his glasses over his ears and Mark Durkee, one of his three night-shift officers, snapped into focus. As usual, the younger man was spit-and-polished within an inch of his life, making Russ acutely aware of his own non-standard-issue appearance: wrinkled wool pants shoved into salt-stained hunting boots, his oversized tartan muffler clashing with his regulation brown parka. Hell, Mark was probably too young to get a cold neck, even with the back of his head shaved almost bald.

“Hey, Mark,” Russ said. “Talk to me.”

The officer waved his chief down the drab green hallway toward the emergency room. The place smelled of disinfectant and bodies, with a whiff of cow manure left over by the last farmer who had come in straight from the barn. “Man, it’s like something out of an old Bing Crosby movie, Chief. The priest at Saint Alban’s found the little guy bundled up at the door of the church. The doctor’s checking him out now.”

“How’s the baby look?”

“Fine, as far as they can tell. He was wrapped up real well, and the doc says he probably wasn’t out in the cold more’n a half hour or so.” Russ’s sore stomach eased up. He’d seen a lot over the years, but nothing shook him as much as an abused child. He’d had one baby-stuffed-in-a-garbage-bag case when he’d been an MP in Germany, and he didn’t care to ever see one again.

Mark and Russ nodded to the admissions nurse standing guard between the ER waiting room and the blue-curtained alcove where patients got their first look-see. “Evening, Alta,” Russ said. “How’s business?” The waiting room, decorated with swags of tired tinsel and a matching silver tree, was empty except for a teenager sprawled over one of the low sofas.

“Slow,” the nurse said, buzzing them into the emergency treatment area. “Typical Monday night.” The old linoleum floors carried the rattle of gurney wheels and the squeak of rubber-soled shoes.

“Over there,” Mark said, pointing. Framed by limp white curtains dangling from ceiling tracks, an athletic-looking woman in gray sweats was leaning on a plastic incubator, writing in a pocket-sized notebook.

“Who the hell’s that?” Russ asked. “I swear, if they let a reporter in here before we’ve cleared the facts I’ll—” he strode toward the incubator. “Hey, you,” he said.

His challenge brought the woman’s chin up, and she snapped her head around, zeroing in on the two policemen. She was plain, no makeup and nondescript dark blond hair scraped back in a ponytail. She had that overbred look he associated with rich women from the north side of town: high cheekbones and a long thin nose that was perfect for looking down at folks. Mark grabbed his arm, grinning. “No, no. That’s the priest, Chief.” He laughed out loud at the expression on Russ’s face. The priest? Christ on a bicycle. She gave Russ a look that said, “Wanna make something of it?” He felt himself coloring. Her eyes were the only exceptional thing about her, true hazel, like granite seen under green water.

“Officer Durkee,” she said, her gaze sliding off Russ as if she had already weighed and found him wanting. “Any word yet from the Department of Human Services?” There was the barest trace of a Southern accent in her no-nonsense voice.

“No, ma’am,” Mark said, rocking back and forth on his heels. “But I’d expect that. They got a lot of ground to cover around here, and not many people to cover it with.” He was still grinning like a greased hyena.

Russ decided the best defense was a good offense. “I’m Russell Van Alstyne, Millers Kill chief of police.” He held out his hand. She shook firm, like a guy.

“Clare Fergusson,” she said. “I’m the new priest at Saint Alban’s. That’s the Episcopal Church. At the corner of Elm and Church.” There was a faint testiness in her voice. Russ relaxed a fraction. A woman priest. If that didn’t beat all.

“I know which it is. There are only four churches in town.” He saw the fog creeping along the edges of his glasses again and snatched them off, fishing for a tissue in his pocket. “Can you tell me what happened, um . . .” What was he supposed to call her? “Mother?”

“I go by Reverend, Chief. Ms. is fine, too.”

“Oh. Sorry. I never met a woman priest before.”

“We’re just like the men priests, except we’re willing to pull over and ask directions.”

A laugh escaped him. Okay. He wasn’t going to feel like an unwashed heathen around her.

“I was leaving the church through the kitchen door in the back, which is sunken below street level. There are stairs rising to a little parking area, tucked between the parish hall and the rectory, not big, just room enough for a couple cars. I was going for a run.” She looked down and waggled one sneaker-shod foot. Her sweatshirt read ARMY. “The box was on the steps. I thought maybe someone had left off a donation at first, because all I could see were the blankets. When I picked it up, though, I could feel something shifting inside.” She looked through the plastic into the incubator, shaking her head. “The poor thing was so still when I unwrapped him I thought he was already dead.” She looked up at Russ. “Imagine how troubled and desperate someone would have to be to leave a baby out in the cold like that.”

Russ grunted. “Anything else that might give us an idea of who left him there?”

“No. Just the baby, and the blankets, and the note inside.”

Russ frowned at Mark. “You didn’t tell me about any note,” he said.

The officer shrugged, pulling a glassine envelope out of his jacket pocket. “Reverend Fergusson didn’t mention it until after I had called you,” he explained. He handed Russ the plastic-encased paper.

“That’s my fault, yeah,” said the priest, not sounding at all apologetic. Russ held the clear envelope at arm’s length to get a better view. “I didn’t call DSS until I was over here, and I wanted to make sure they knew what the baby’s parents intended.” She looked over his arm at the note. “I’m sorry, but I handled it without thinking about any fingerprints or anything.”

It was an eight-by-eleven sheet of paper ripped from a spiral-bound notebook, the kind that you could get anywhere. The handwriting, in blue ink, was blocky, extremely childlike. Russ guessed that the note’s author had held the pen in her left hand to disguise her printing. “This is our baby, Cody,” it read. “Please give him to Mr. and Mrs. Burns here at St. Alban’s. We both agree they should have him, so there won’t be any trouble later on with the adoption. Tell our baby we love him.”

Russ lowered the note and met the priest’s green-brown eyes. “Kids,” he said.

“That would be my guess,” she said.

“Who are the Burnses?”

“Geoffrey and Karen Burns.”

“The lawyers,” Russ said, surprised.

“They’re parishioners of St. Alban’s. I understand they’ve been seeking adoption for over two years now. They’ve been on the Prayers of the People list for the past two weeks, and as I recall, our secretary told me that’s a regular thing for them.”

“This is something published? Or what?”

“Prayed out loud, every Sunday during the service.”

He looked closely at her. “Sounds like at least one of the baby’s parents might go to your church.”

She looked uncomfortable. “Yeah. Although I’m sure that everyone who knows the Burnses also knows they’re looking for a baby.”

“Why leave it at St. Alban’s then? Why not on the Burnses’ doorstep?”

Reverend Fergusson swept her hands open wide.

Russ handed the note back to Mark. “What time did you find the baby?” he asked the priest.

“About . . . nine-thirty, quarter to ten,” she said. “There was a welcoming reception from the vestry tonight that finished up around nine. I changed in my office, checked messages, and then headed out. I already gave Officer Durkee the names of the people who were there.”

Russ squinted, trying for a mental picture of the area where Elm branched off the curve of Church Street. One of Tick Soley’s parking lots was across the street from the church, one light on the corner but nothing further up where the houses started. “What did you say was behind the little parking area?”

“The rectory, where I live. There’s a tall hedge, and then my side yard. My driveway is on the other side of the house.”

Russ sighed. “The kids—the parents—could have parked in any one of those spots and snuck over to the stairs with the baby. I somehow doubt we’re gonna get an eyewitness with a license number and a description of the driver.”

The priest tapped the glassine envelope. “Chief Van Alstyne, exactly how hard do you have to look for the parents of this baby?” For the first time Russ let himself take a long look into the portable incubator. The sleeping baby didn’t look any different from every other newborn he had ever seen, all fat burnished cheeks and almond-shaped eyes. He wondered how hard up or screwed up or roughed up a girl would have to be to pull a perfect little thing like that out of her body and then leave him in a cardboard box. In the dark. On a night when the windchill hovered at zero degrees.

He looked back at the priest. She was leaning toward him slightly, focusing on him as if he were the only person in the whole hospital. “I don’t need to tell you that leaving a baby like that is called endangering a child,” he said. She nodded. “And of course, if we can’t find the parents, it’s going to take longer for DSS to actually get the baby out of foster care and into an adoptive home. But the thing is to find out how voluntary this really was, giving up the baby.”

Her mouth opened and then snapped shut. He continued. “When a woman really wants to give up her kid for adoption, she usually gets in touch with an agency, or a lawyer, or somebody, well before the baby is born. These throwaway situations—”

“She didn’t throw Cody away. Whoever she is.”

“No, she didn’t. Which makes me think it’s not one of those times when the mother is a druggie or a drunk or a psycho. But it does make me wonder if her boyfriend or her father forced her into it. And if she’s not already regretting what she did, but is too scared of us or of him to come forward and reclaim her son.”

“I never thought of that,” Reverend Fergusson said, biting her lower lip. “Oh dear. Maybe I shouldn’t have—”

The emergency room doors opened with a hydraulic pouf. Russ recognized the small, bearded man in the expensive topcoat and the striking brunette woman at his side, but he’d know who they were even if he had never seen them in the Washington County Courthouse before, just from the look on Reverend Fergusson’s face.

“We got here as soon as we could,” Geoffrey Burns said. His voice was tight. His glance flicked around the treatment area, lighting on the incubator. His wife saw it at the same time.

“Oh . . .” she said, pressing one perfectly manicured hand to her mouth. “Oh. Is that him?”

The priest nodded. She stepped aside, allowing the Burnses a clear view of the sleeping baby. “Oh, Geoff, just look at him . . .” Karen Burns hesitated, as if showing too much eagerness might cause the incubator to vanish.

Her husband stared at the baby for a long moment. “Where’s the doctor who’s been treating him?” he said. He looked at Russ. “Chief Van Alstyne. I take it the Department of Social Services hasn’t seen fit to send anyone over yet.”

“Mr. Burns.” Russ nodded. “I expect we’ll see somebody soon. They’re a little overwhelmed over there, you know.”

“Oh, don’t I just,” Geoff Burns said.

“I take it Reverend Fergusson called you about the note that was found with the baby?” Russ glanced pointedly toward the priest, who lifted her chin in response. “You folks know that it’s way too early to start thinking of this boy as your own. No matter what the parents wrote.”

Karen Burns turned toward him. “Of course, Chief. But we are licensed foster parents without any children in our home right now, and we intend to press DSS to place Cody with us.” Mrs. Burns had a voice so perfectly modulated she could have been selling him something on the radio. Russ glanced at Burns, thin and short, and wondered at the attraction. His own wife was one hell of a good-looking woman, but Karen Burns would put her in the shade.

“Under the standard of the best interests of the child, it’s preferable that a pre-adoptive child be fostered with the would-be adoptive parents, if there are no natural relatives able to care for the child. Young v. The Department of Social Services.”

Russ blinked at the lawyer’s aggressively set brows. “I’m not contesting you in court, Mr. Burns,” he said. “But we don’t know that there aren’t any natural relatives. We don’t know if the mother gave him up of her own free will or not.” He shifted his weight forward, deliberately using his six-foot-three-inches as a visual reminder of his authority here. “Isn’t it a little odd for a professional couple like you to be foster parents?”

Karen Burns laid her hand on her husband’s arm, cutting off whatever he was about to say. “I work from home as well as from my office, part time. On those times we’ve had a child in our care, I just cut way back.”

“I assure you we’re properly licensed and have passed all the state requirements,” Burns said, his face tight. “We are fully prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to care for a child. Unlike the biological parents of this boy.”

Karen Burns twisted a single gold bangle around her wrist. “Of course you have to look for the parents, Chief Van Alstyne. And I’m sure that anyone who took such care to make sure their baby would be found immediately, and left a note asking us to be his adoptive parents, would only confirm that request.”

Her husband spoke almost at the same time. “We intend to file for TPR immediately, on grounds of abandonment and endangerment.” There was a pause. The Burnses looked at each other, then at Russ. They both spoke at once.

“I hope you do find her. She undoubtedly needs help and counseling.”

“I hope you don’t find her, to be frank. It’ll be better for the baby all around.”

Reverend Fergusson broke the awkward silence. “What’s TPR mean?”

“Termination of parental rights,” Russ answered. “Usually happens after the court takes a DSS caseworker’s recommendation that there’s no way the child ought to go back to the parent. Takes months, sometimes years, if DSS is trying to reunite the family.” He rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand. “During which time the kid is in foster care.”

“Unless, as in this case, the child is an abandoned infant and the parents can’t be found,” Geoff Burns said, tapping his finger into his palm in time to his words.

“Uh huh,” Russ agreed. “Unless they can’t be found.”

CHAPTER 2

The pediatric resident, bright-eyed and way too young for comfort, entered the treatment area from behind a blue baize curtain. “Oh, hey!” he said. “You must be the Burnses! Your priest here told me about you. Hey, you wanna hold Cody here or what?” He unlatched the top of the incubator and scooped up the baby expertly, placing him in Karen Burns’s arms before she had a chance to respond.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” Her husband put his arm around her, turning her away from the others. Russ, rubbing away at the headache building behind his eyebrows, felt the weight of attention on him. He glanced down at Reverend Fergusson, who was looking at him instead of at the would-be-parents. It took him a moment to identify the expression on her face, it had been so long since he’d seen it directed at him. Sympathy.

The resident was trying to give his report to Durkee, who was just as doggedly pointing him in Russ’s direction. “Hey,” he said, “You’re the police chief? Really neat.”

“I think so.” Over the doctor’s shoulder, Russ could see Reverend Fergusson’s lips twitch.

“The baby’s in real good shape,” the doctor said, pulling out several sheets of paper stapled together. “Here’s a copy of his tests and the examination results. I place the time of birth within the last two or three days. No drugs in his system, no signs of fetal alcohol syndrome, no signs of abuse. His cord was cut and wrapped inexpertly, but somebody kept it nice and clean. We’ll have to wait until he’s had a bowel movement, but I’m guessing he’s been fed formula.”

Russ scanned the report, noting the blood group—AB positive—and the notation that the baby had been bathed at some point in his brief life. “Okay,” he said. “Mark, get me the box and the blankets, we’ll see if we can get anything from those. I want you to stay here until somebody from DSS arrives, unless you get a squawk.” Mark nodded and disappeared into the examination cubby. Russ folded the medical report and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

“Here you go, Chief,” Mark said, returning with the box. He passed it to Russ, who examined it without much hope of anything useful. It was sturdy, new-looking, marked with the logo of a Finger Lakes orchard. Lane’s IGA and the Grand Union probably had hundreds just like it tossed in their storerooms. The blankets were a mix: an old, well-worn gold polyester thing, a heavy woolen horse blanket in plaid, and what looked like two brand-new flannel baby blankets, the kind his sister had by the dozens. Russ had a sudden image of himself going door-to-door, asking, “Ma’am? Do you recognize any of these blankets? And has anyone in your household given birth lately?”

Reverend Fergusson had gone over to the Burnses and was talking softly to them. Karen Burns said something, looking at her husband, and he nodded. All three of them bent their heads. Russ realized with a shock that they were praying. Openly displayed religion made him as uncomfortable as hell, and it didn’t help when the priest signed the cross over both of them and then laid her hands on the baby and blessed him. She really was a priest. Jesus Christ. A woman priest. Were Episcopalians like Catholics? He’d have to ask his mother, she’d know.

When Reverend Fergusson broke away from the Burnses and walked straight toward him, he thought for one guilty moment she must have read his mind and was coming over to give him what for.

“Chief Van Alstyne, will you be leaving soon?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said, warily. Did she want to pray over him, too?

“Ah. Well, Karen and Geoff are going to stay here until after the caseworker arrives, and I, um . . .” She worried her lower lip some, hesitating. “I called an ambulance, you see, ’cause I thought Cody ought to be seen as soon as possible, and I, I don’t have . . .”

The light dawned. “Do you need a ride home, Reverend?” Russ said.

“I don’t want to impose . . .”

“I’d be glad to give you a lift, if you don’t mind me stopping by the station to drop this off before we get to your house. I want to make sure our fingerprint guy has it first thing in the morning.” He hefted the box.

“I’m not in any hurry,” she said. “On the other hand, I did want to get to the rectory sometime tonight, and I understand that the taxis in Millers Kill aren’t the quickest to respond to a call . . .”

Russ snorted. “If you’re talking about In-Town Taxi, you’re right. One car is their whole fleet, and when the driver decides he’s done for the day, you’re outta luck.” He waved good-bye to Mark and gestured for the priest to precede him through the emergency department doors.

“ ’Night, Chief,” the admitting nurse called.

“ ’Night, Alta,” he said.

The dry, cold air outside the overheated hospital was like a good stiff drink after a hard day. Russ breathed deeply. He noticed the priest wasn’t carrying a coat. “Hey, Reverend, you can’t go outside in just sweats this time of year. Where are you from, anyway?”

She looked down at her unseasonable outfit. “It shows, huh? Southern Virginia. And when I was in the army, I managed to never get myself stationed any place where the temperature dipped to below freezing.”

“Neat trick,” he said. In the army? A woman priest in the army. What next? She parachute out of planes dropping bibles?

“I was a helicopter pilot,” she said. “Late of the Eighteenth Airborne Corps. You’d be surprised how often we needed to drop men and gear into overheated climates.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” he said. “I was career army. First in the infantry, then an MP. I retired about four years ago.”

“Really?” She stopped in her tracks. “We’ll have to compare postings.” She looked up at him curiously. “It’s just that the way you knew everybody, I assumed you’d lived in Millers Kill all your life.”

Russ pulled open the passenger-side door of his cruiser. She slid into the seat, yelping at the chilly vinyl. He crossed to the other side, dropped the box into the backseat, and got behind the wheel. “I was born here, lived here my first eighteen years.” He started up the car, turned on the radio, and grabbed the mike. “Ten-fifty, this is Ten-fifty-seven. I’m rolling, en route from the hospital to the station.” The radio crackled and Harlene’s voice came on the line. “Ten-fifty-seven, this is Ten-fifty. Acknowledged you en route from the hospital to the station. We’ll see you soon.”

The woman beside him was shivering, her arms clasped around herself, her knees drawn up. “Sorry,” he said. “The heater in the old whore takes a long time to warm up.” A second after he spoke, he remembered he was talking to a priest. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, caught himself, then blurted out, “Christ!” at his own stupidity before he could help it. He hung his head, laughing and groaning at the same time.

“You! Swearing in front of a priest!” She pointed her finger at his chest. “Drop and gimme twenty!” He stared at her, not sure he was hearing right. She smiled slowly, her eyes half-closing. “Gotcha.”

Russ shook his head, laughing. “Okay, okay. Sorry.” He shifted the cruiser into gear and eased it out of the hospital parking lot onto Burgoyne Avenue. Nearing midnight on a Monday, there was hardly any traffic on the normally busy road.

Reverend Fergusson shifted in her seat, exclaiming briefly when she hit a particularly cold spot. “You were telling me you were born and raised right here . . .”

“Oh, yeah,” he sighed. “Probably would have gotten a job at the mill and never left town. But I got out of high school in ’sixty-nine and my number came up in the Instant Loser Lottery. Next thing I knew, it was good-bye New York State, hello Southeast Asia.”

He checked the gauge on the heater. “Turned out the army and I made a pretty good match. We went from Vietnam to the Gulf together.” He switched the blower to high and the interior began to warm up. “After I retired,”—no need to go into detail about that phase of his life—“I decided the time was right to finally come home. The old chief was retiring, and they needed someone with experience who wanted to live the quiet life up here in Washington county. It’s a good outfit, eight officers and four part-timers, and I liked they way everyone worked together. My wife, Linda, loved the idea of us finally settling down somewhere other than a big city or busy post”—well, that was half-true, she had wanted him to settle down—“and she likes being so close to my mother and my sister.” Now that was a whopper. But it was the party line, and he stuck to it. “So that’s how I wound up back in my old home town a quarter-century after I left.”

“Does your wife work?”

“Oh, yeah.” He swung into the right-hand lane and turned onto Morningside Drive. The lights from the new Wal-Mart turned the night sodium orange. “She has her own business, making custom curtains. It’s been more successful than either of us imagined.” He slowed, checking out the cars in the parking lot. He didn’t like all-night stores, they were targets for trouble. “She’s getting into mail orders now, says she wants to make up a whole catalogue. It’s great, it’s been really just great.”

“Sounds like she found her vocation. Good for her. It can be hard for some military families to readjust to civilian life. You two have any kids?”

“No,” he said. “What’s your story? You came from Virginia originally?”

“Born and bred in a small town outside of Norfolk,” she said. “My family owns a charter and commercial air business. I had always thought I wanted to be part of it someday, so after college, I joined the army as a helo jock. The military is still the best way to train for a career as a pilot, you know. And the army was putting on a big push to get female recruits into non-traditional fields. I was the only woman in my unit.”

“Must have been tough,” he said. Now that he thought about it, she did seem less like a bible-tosser and more like the type to be dropping arms in an LZ.

“At times, yeah. It was good though.” Taking his eyes off the road for a second, he could see a one-sided smile flash across her face. “But, as it turned out, I had to put my piloting plans aside when I was called to the priesthood. I went back to Virginia to go to seminary, which was really good for my parents.”

Russ didn’t want to get into the murky mystical depths of how someone was “called to the priesthood.” “How’d you wind up here?” he asked.

“I spent a summer as an assistant curate in the Berkshires. I had never been in this part of the country before, and I just fell in love with it. I started looking for a position somewhere in New England, and when St. Alban’s came open, I thought, well, it’s only a half-hour drive from Vermont . . .”

“Ah ha,” Russ said. “So you haven’t experienced a North-country winter yet.” The light at the intersection with Radcliff Street turned red, and he pumped his brakes to avoid skidding on the icy spots.

“Therein lies the rub, as they say. My internship ran from May through September, so I was a little unprepared for six inches of snow before the end of November. I’ve only been here for three weeks, so I’m not exactly acclimated yet. I do have a coat, though. But when I stumbled over the baby, I was on my way out for a run.”

He looked at her again. She was obviously fit, but she wasn’t a big woman, scarcely up to his shoulder standing. “Just because this is a small city and we look like Bedford Falls from It’s a Wonderful Life, don’t be fooled into thinking bad things can’t happen here. They can, and do, so watch where you run if you’re out at night alone.”

She waved a hand, unconcerned. “I can take care of myself,” she said.

“Lemme guess, you know karate, you’re trained in the art of self-defense . . .”

“Nothing formal. But the army made sure I could break somebody’s arm if I needed to.”

The light turned green. He rolled onto Radcliff, causing an ancient Chevy Nova that had been barreling down the street to brake hard in an attempt to get under the thirty-five-mile-an-hour speed limit. “Lemme tell you, Reverend, somebody tries to mug you, they aren’t gonna get close enough for you to break their arm. Every ass—uh, jerk on the streets today’s got a gun. Even up here. They come up outta New York City, just like the drugs do.”

He glanced at her when he made a left turn onto Main. She was studying the peaceful storefronts and frowning, absently rubbing her forearm with one long-fingered hand. “Is that a big problem in Millers Kill? Drugs?” she asked.

Russ sighed. He knew when he was being side-stepped. “Not too bad, no. Alcohol is the number one drug of choice up here, like you’ll find in a lot of rural areas. My biggest single crime problem is domestic violence, and nine times out of ten there’s alcohol involved.”

He pulled the cruiser up in front of the station. “I’ll leave the car running for you,” he said. “Be back in a minute.” He grabbed the box and took off through the icy air, bounding up the stairs two at a time. There was nobody at the front desk at this hour. Instead, he loped into the dispatch room, where Harlene was just pouring herself a cup of coffee. “Harlene, you good lookin’ woman!” he said. Harlene was some ten years his elder, a big, square woman with an uncannily organized mind and a photographic memory of every highway, lane, and dirt road in three counties.

“One of these days, I’m going to slap you with a sexual harassment lawsuit,” she said, hefting herself into her chair and curling her headset over her springy gray hair.

“And let Harold know how much fun you’re having over here? No way.” Her husband Harold had recently retired, and was riding Harlene pretty hard to quit work and stay at home with him. “I’m gonna lock this into evidence,” Russ said, waggling the box. “Will you leave a note for Phil to get on it first thing in the morning? Prints, hairs, anything he can come up with.”

Harlene peered at the cardboard. “You want him to send it on to the state if nothing pans out?”

“No. No need to spend the money. This is that abandoned baby Mark called in. More likely than not the mother’ll surface within a week or so. You know how these things run.”

Harlene nodded. The teenager wound up in the hospital with post-partum complications. Or she broke down and told a friend, who told another, until there wasn’t any secret anymore.

“Okay, Chief, you got it.” She pointed to the coffeemaker. “Just brewed a fresh pot,” she said.

“Gotta haul it,” Russ said, stuffing the ends of his scarf back into his jacket. “I’m giving the priest who found the baby a ride back to St. Alban’s rectory.”

“You and a priest.” Harlene snorted. “I’d give good money to hear how that conversation goes.”

“Actually,” Russ said, enjoying his moment as much as Mark had his, “She’s very easy to talk to. She’s old army, too.”

Harlene was gratifyingly surprised. “Well! Didn’t know they could have women priests.” She looked into the middle distance for a moment. “Ask her what she thinks of my sexual harassment suit,” she said.

Russ bit back a laugh and grabbed the locker key off the hook on the wall. He clattered downstairs and unlocked the evidence cage, tagging the box and scribbling his entry information in the dog-eared logbook. Within two minutes he was running back upstairs, shouting a good-night to Harlene, and out the front door again.

When he got into the cruiser, Reverend Fergusson jerked her hand away from the radio. “Sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t resist. I wanted to see if it sounded like it does on all those television shows.”

“And?” Russ said, backing the car out of his parking spot.

“And it sounds like the state police have wa-a-a-ay too much time on their hands,” she said. “One guy was going on and on about some fishing tournament he’d gone to. It sounded more like Bassmasters than Dragnet.”

They both laughed. “Yeah, well . . .” Russ said. “Mondays are the quietest night of the week. You come cruising with me on Friday, then you’ll really hear something.”

She pinned him with those clear hazel eyes. “Could I?”

Startled, he almost ran a red light. He looked at her. “Reverend, why on earth would you want to do something like that?” he said.

“Because I want to get a feel for the problems of Millers Kill that I won’t get in a vestry reception,” she said. “Because I need to figure out what kind of outreach ministry my church ought to be doing, instead of just what my parishioners feel comfortable doing right now. And because,” she grinned, a reckless, one-sided grin that made him think she must be mistaken about a priestly calling, “I’m a recovering adrenaline addict. Who hasn’t had a fix in a while. Green light.”

“Huh.” He drove on. “Doesn’t your church have a mass or whatever it is on Fridays? I recall seeing cars there in the evening. And besides, I’m out pretty late. Don’t you, I dunno, get up early to pray or something?”

She made an amused sound in the back of her throat. “Saturday’s a day off for me. At least, it’s supposed to be. So I can sleep in. If worse comes to worse, I can double up. Praise God while I’m making pancakes, thank the Lord while I’m doing the week’s shopping.” She began to sing almost inaudibly, “And He walks with me, and He talks with me . . .”

“Uh-huh. I may not know much about religion, but I can tell when I’m being sold a bill of goods.”

“So can I come?”

How do I get myself into these situations? he thought. “Okay, yeah,” he said finally. “But you do what I say, when I say it, and if I decide for whatever reason that it’s not safe, you get left behind. No arguments.”

“Do I strike you as the argumentative type?” she asked. He snorted. Along Church Street, the municipal Christmas decorations had been hung on the lampposts. Same fuzzy plastic candy canes and reindeer that had been there when he was a kid. Same fake greenery around the poles, same fat outdoor bulbs. He wondered where they got replacements from. No way anyone was still making lights like that. He turned onto Elm. The rectory was a pretty Dutch Colonial from the turn of the century.

“Here it is, on the left.”

“Nice,” Russ said, parking in the drive. “Bet you’ve got great woodwork in there.”

The priest groaned. “I can’t tell,” she said. “The place is all over boxes, most of ’em completely unlabeled, so I have no idea what’s in there. I have some I filled before my last posting to Fort Rucker and haven’t unpacked in seven years. They could contain anything from ’eighties-style miniskirts to relics of the True Cross for all I can remember. Somehow, there always seems to be something more interesting to do than unpacking and housecleaning . . .”

He slung his arm over the seat and turned toward her. “You gotta get one of those ladies’ committees over to do their thing. Have you set up and sparkling in no time.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “And they’d do a great job, too. But you know, you get the place clean and organized at the start and forever after, whenever one of my parishioners came over for a visit, they’d be thinking, My! She certainly didn’t keep this up very well!” She looked up the drive to her house, smiling a little. “Ah, it’s just the new-posting blues. A new town, all new faces. It can get . . .”

“Lonely.”

“Yeah.”

They sat in companionable silence, not in any hurry to end the ride.

The radio squawked. “Ten-fifty-seven, this is Ten-fifty. I’ve got an accident reported out on Route Thirty-Five, at mile fifteen.”

Russ clicked in the mike. “Ten-fifty, this is Ten-fifty-seven. Acknowledged. I’m rolling to Route Thirty-Five, mile fifteen.” He spread his hands apologetically. “Duty calls. Good-night, Reverend Fergusson.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, call me Clare.” She opened her door and slid out, leaning down to keep him in view.

“Clare,” he said. “And you can call me Chief.” She laughed loudly. “No, no, call me Russ. After all, if we’re going to be partners next Friday . . .”

She nodded. “I’ll be there. Russ. Good night, now.” She slammed the door. He waited until she had reached her front door and let herself in. Without keys. He made a mental note to get on her about that come Friday. He backed out of her drive and hit his lights, unaccountably smiling all the way to Route Thirty-Five.

The girl unlocked the deadbolt and turned the latch. It was cold in the kitchen, but then again, she had been desperately cold all night long. A light had been left on for her in the hall. She walked to the stairs and tried to remember what she was supposed to be doing. Concentrate. Upstairs. She hefted her overnight bag and gasped as a cramping pain shot through her abdomen. She stopped, pressed her fist against her belly. Nothing to worry about. It was normal. The book had said it was normal to have cramps for several days afterwards.

She picked up her bag again and trudged up the bare wooden stairway. In the upstairs hall, she stared stupidly at the closed doors. Everything was totally foreign to her. Her breasts were aching and damp. She shut her eyes and breathed in deeply, and when she looked again, she saw her own bedroom door in front of her.

Inside, she dropped her luggage and sagged onto the bed. The springs creaked loudly. “Mmmm,” came a voice from the other side of the room. “Katie, is that you? Geez, it’s late.”

“Yeah, Emily,” she whispered. “It’s me.” From across the street, she heard a dog barking and barking. It would go on for an hour or more some nights, a frustrated sheepdog chained to a barren circle of dirt.

“That damn dog,” groaned Emily. “Why don’t they do it a favor and take it out to the country and let it go?”

“It’s not that . . . it’s not that . . .” Katie gulped loudly and began to cry.

“Katie, honey, what’s wrong?” Emily snapped on a tiny bedside lamp. “Oh sweetie, tell me what’s wrong.”

Katie shook her head, crying harder. Emily crossed to her bed and sat beside her, hugging her tight. Katie leaned on her shoulder, sobbing open-mouthed, while outside the dog barked and howled into the freezing air.

CHAPTER 3

The case clock in St. Alban’s meeting room rang twelve slow, ceremonious hours. The donation of a grateful parishioner who had made a fortune carpetbagging in the post–Civil War South and returned to retire in his native eastern New York, it had a place of honor between two enormous diamond-paned windows. Where, Clare reflected, it had undoubtedly sat unmoved since 1882. She was beginning to suspect the congregation of St. Alban’s didn’t exactly embrace novelty and innovation. Hiring the first female head of a parish in this area may have exhausted their reserves of daring for the next ten years.

Norm Madsen, a basset-faced gentleman in his seventies, tapped the sheet of paper before him reproachfully. “This isn’t an agenda, Reverend Fergusson. We always have an agenda for the vestry meetings.”

“And the Wednesday lunch meeting is always financials, to get anything ready to pass on to the stewardship committee Thursday night.” Terence McKellan, the head of commercial loans at AllBanc—until recently The First Alleghany Farmers and Merchants Bank, he had taken pains to tell her—laced his hands across his commodious middle. “No offense, but articles about unwed mothers ought to go before the activities committee.”

“What sort of activity do you want them to take up, Terry?” Robert Corlew snorted with laughter. The wide-shouldered, bull-necked developer had an improbable mass of hair that Clare was sure must be a toupee.

Mrs. Henry Marshall, the only woman on the vestry board, looked quellingly at Corlew. “Since most of the ladies on activities are my age, Bob,” she poked a pencil at her silver waves, “I expect they won’t be adding to the unwed mother population any time soon. Though most of them are unwed by now,” she said thoughtfully.

Clare breathed slowly and deeply. In. Out. “I’m sorry I didn’t compile an agenda. I’ll be sure to do that next meeting. As for the newspaper article and the figures sheet in front of you,” she leaned forward, resting her arms on the massive black oak table that dominated the room, “you all know about the baby found abandoned here Monday night. That inspired me to do some research into what facilites are available to help single teen mothers.”

“There’s plenty of aid in Millers Kill,” Vaughn Fowler said, popping an antacid tablet into his mouth. “Welfare and low-income housing and a Goodwill store. We even support a soup kitchen with the other churches in town.” The retired colonel rapped the table with his chunky West Point ring as he enumerated each item.

“That’s true, Mr. Fowler. No teenager with a baby is going to starve here. But did you know seventy percent of the girls who get pregnant in their teens drop out of Millers Kill High?”

“Not to sound unsympathetic,” Fowler said, “but what makes you think these girls would have finished high school in the first place?”

Clare had seen that question coming since yesterday, when she had woken up with her inspired idea. “If you look to page four, you’ll see an article I copied from The Washington Post, about a Junior League program I helped with when I was a seminarian.”

“Junior League?” Mrs. Marshall adjusted her reading glasses and bent to the paper. “That’s always a good recommendation.”

“In their area, the League had found that one of two things tended to happen when a girl had a baby. Either she dropped out of high school to care for the child or her mother stopped working, and often went on welfare, to care for the child.” Terry McKellan read along, his plump cheeks quivering as he nodded. “Drop-outs were at very high risk for further pregnancies, drug abuse, and domestic abuse. Girls whose mothers gave up work to stay at home with the baby finished high school in higher numbers, but few of them found work afterwards, leading to the same sort of dependencies as their sisters with no diploma.”

Corlew frowned. “Couldn’t find work? Or didn’t look for it?”

“Most of these girls had no experience with or example of combining motherhood and work. That’s what the Junior League program did. It partnered girls with mentors, who tutored them in everything from parenting skills to how to interview for a job. It provided free day care for the girls during the school day and a quiet space for them to do homework after school. Girls who went through the program not only had a ninety percent graduation rate, but most of them then went on to either community college or to work.”

Fowler rapped the table with his ring. “Funding?”

Clare quelled the urge to respond, “Yes, sir.” Colonel Fowler was the double of several commanding officers she had served under, complete with graying brush cut and age-defying figure. He expected her to assess problems, devise solutions, and act. Or at least, that’s what he had told her during the interview process for this parish. She flipped open to the last page. “Initial funding came from the League, who paid for the day-care workers, some equipment and baby supplies, and a part-time grant writer to raise money independently. Area churches donated the space. Girls who used the facilities after they had started working paid an hourly fee, adjusted to their income.” She looked around the table, meeting the eyes of every man and woman, gathering each vestry member in. “I propose St. Alban’s start a similar project here. To be funded out of the general funds, using either the parish hall or the old nursery room for the day care. We could have a powerful effect on the lives of young women and children who otherwise don’t have much of a future.”

The room was silent for a moment. “You want us to be a home for unwed mothers?” Sterling Sumner raised his bushy eyebrows in disbelief. “Outrageous.” He flipped the ends of one of the English-school scarves he always affected.

“How much would this cost us?” Terry McKellan asked, scribbling some notes on the margin.

“What about insurance? State licensing requirements for running a day-care facility? Transportation to and from the school and the girls’ homes?” Fowler rapped his ring on every point. “This isn’t like opening our nursery for members’ children during the Sunday services.”

“No, si—no, it’s not. All of those are issues that will have to be researched. I don’t have a whole, detailed proposal to present yet. But I would like the approval and support of the vestry before I call up a committee or start running down licensing requirements. I’d like to know this project has your support so long as the general fund isn’t unduly strained by it.” Nervous energy forced her out of her seat to stride around the table. “It’s innovative, it’s meeting an unmet need in the community, it will open St. Alban’s doors to new faces, young faces. It exemplifies Christ’s charge to us to be his disciples by serving others.” She reached her chair and leaned against the worn green velvet back. “I believe those were some of the things you said you wanted me to accomplish as your priest.”

Vaughn Fowler’s bright blue eyes seemed to be assessing her for leadership potential. “One of the most important goals we set for you was to grow St. Alban’s. Bring in new families. Kids.”

“More pledges,” Corlew muttered.

Fowler shot him a curt glance. “This . . . unwed mother outreach sounds commendable. But will it attract more of the kind of members we want? Or will it scare some families away?”

Clare went blank. “What?”

“In other words,” Sterling Sumner said, “will the quality families we want to attract stay away because we’ve filled our landmark Eighteen-fifty Gothic Revival sanctuary with Daisy Mae and Queen Latisha!” He swiped at the table with one end of his scarf, as if wiping away contamination.

“My grandfather would have been more blunt,” Clare said, crossing her arms. “He would have come right out and said ‘poor white trash’ and ‘uppity coloreds.’ ”

Fowler held up one hand. “No name calling. Reverend Clare, please.” He gestured, flat-handed, for her to resume her seat. She did so, ungraciously. “Sterling was being melodramatic, as usual. But the core of the thing is a matter of concern. St. Alban’s was one of the first Episcopal churches in this area. We’ve been able to draw members from even beyond the Millers Kill-Cossayaharie-Fort Henry townships because we have traditional worship with wonderful music in a beautiful setting. Many of us,” his gesture encompassed the rest of the vestry, “are from families that have been congregants for generations.” Clare opened her mouth. “Let me finish. The parish needs to grow. It needs new blood and, realistically, new money. Before you plunge ahead with your teen-mother project, I’d like to see you do something to encourage families in. Something to draw favorable attention to St. Alban’s.”

Around the table the other vestry members were nodding. Clare folded her hands. “I can handle two assignments simultaneously, si—Mr. Fowler.”

His mouth tilted in the suggestion of a smile. “I’m sure you can.”

“Perhaps organizing some meet-the-parishioners teas?” Mrs. Marshall said.

“No, no, no.” Robert Corlew shook his head. His hair did not move. “We need something that’ll get us in the papers. Free advertising.”

“Tours of the church? An evening organ concert series!” Sterling Sumner brightened.

“You were inspired, you said, by the baby abandoned at our back door. I suggest you help the Burnses to foster him. That’s—” Fowler’s ring rapped for emphasis, “the kind of image and publicity that says we’re a family-friendly place. Helping a couple become a family by supporting their efforts to adopt.”

“But—not that I wouldn’t want to focus my time and effort on the Burnses, but isn’t that up to the Department of Social Services? And the legal system? And as much as I’m sure we’d all like to see them become parents, I don’t see how that will help us attract new members.”

“You don’t know what this town is like.” Terry McKellan laughed. “Word of mouth is a way of life here. Plus, the news about the baby is already in the paper. Why the heck not make sure they say a few nice things about us, huh?”

Clare looked out a leaded-glass window to where snow flurries were spinning through the air. Ideas crowded her mind, far-fetched, practical, too expensive, possible—“We could start by enlisting parish support,” she said. She returned her attention to the table. “A letter-writing campaign to the DSS and the governor’s office. Get volunteers to help them transition from a couple to foster parents. Hold a Blessing of Adoption and invite the local press. Invite adoption support groups to meet at St. Alban’s.”

“Good! Excellent! Knew you would be the priest for us,” Fowler said.

Clare looked sharply at him. “What about my mother-baby project?”

“You show us you can organize and get results on the Burnses’ adoption, and we’ll back you to the hilt on day care for unwed teens.” Fowler glanced around the table, registering assent from the rest of the vestry. “Agreed? Agreed.”

Clare blew out her breath in a puff. “Then let’s adjourn.” Before anyone can think of something else to keep out the undesirables, she thought. Everyone stood, stacking papers and collecting coats.

“I’ve gotta make it to Fort Henry Ford by one-thirty,” Terry McKellan said, buttoning his wool coat across a wide expanse of midsection. “My daughter blew out the electrical system in her Taurus, so we swapped her my wife’s Mazda while she was home for Thanksgiving. Now she wants to keep it. Can you imagine what our insurance is gonna be with her driving in Boston?” He looked at Fowler. “What did you get Wes?”

“A Jeep Wrangler. Good in the snow, appeals to an eighteen-year-old’s idea of ‘cool.’ Unfortunately, it couldn’t carry all his stuff down. I’m off to West Point tomorrow with another load. We should have just traded the Expedition with him during the holiday.” Clare attempted to edge past the men as they drifted toward the hallway. “And speaking of vehicles, Reverend Clare, that car of yours is totally impractical.”

Clare had already heard several people’s opinion of her bright red ’82 MG. She smiled brightly. “Your son goes to West Point? And you’re a graduate, too. You must be very proud.”

Terry McKellan roared with laughter. “It was a disappointment to them when he couldn’t get into the Culinary Institute . . .”

Vaughn Fowler ignored the witticism. “He’s the fifth generation of Fowlers to be an Academy man. Edie and I are very proud, yes.”

Clare touched his arm. “Wonderful.” She glanced at her watch. “Oh, look at the time. Gentlemen, I’ve got to run.” She waved to the remaining vestry members and quick-stepped down the hall before the subject of her car could come up again.

She ducked into the parish office and caught her secretary, Lois, with a mouthful of nonfat yogurt and raw bran. Lois looked like a strawberry-blond Nancy Reagan, and she kept her size-two figure, as near as Clare could tell, by eating less than any other human being she had ever seen.

“Mmph!” Lois put down the yogurt and waved her hands.

“I’m escaping comments about my car,” Clare explained.

“Mmmm,” Lois said, swallowing. “It’s too tiny. A Lincoln Town Car, that’s comfort and styling. And if you have blond hair, you can get the leather seats to match.”

Clare made a face. “I’m a dirty blond. I’d have to have dirty seats. Besides, I’m too young for a Town Car.”

Lois made a noncommittal noise.

Clare poked at the Rolodex next to Lois’ white-and-pink book of message slips. “The vestry says they’ll support my young mother’s outreach project if I can help the Burnses successfully adopt Cody.”

Lois sniffed.

“Now I just have to figure out how to influence New York State’s Department of Human Services.”

Lois’ eyebrows arched.

“I think I’m going to need some help on this one.”

“I think you might,” Lois agreed.

Her desk chair creaked as Clare tilted back, looking out the window. Flurries swirled through the air outside, making tiny ticking noises as they hit the glass. The only help she could think of was Chief Van Alstyne. Whom she had already impositioned for a ride from the hospital and bulldozed into offering to take her along on his Friday-night patrol. He was going to think she was only ever after him for something at this rate. Which was a shame, because she had really liked him. He was good people, as grandmother Fergusson would say. He reminded her of friends she had in the army, friends who could always see her, no matter what uniform she was wearing at the time.

Okay. She could ask how the search for Cody’s birth mother was going. Find out what was happening with DSS—surely he’d be up to date on that. And if she gave him a chance to change his mind about Friday night, it would probably be the right thing to do. She should do that. Well. Maybe. She picked up the receiver in one hand and the Millers Kill directory in the other.

Russ was having one of those days that, if it were on video, you’d fast-forward through until you got to a good part. One of his officers had called in with a suspiciously early-in-the-season flu that was probably being treated with shots of cherry brandy and a long ride on a snowmobile. When Russ had taken a break from patrolling and shown up for an unexpected lunch at home, Linda had been too busy sewing up another order of curtains to eat with him. And she had asked him to drop off her loan application at the bank, when she knew he hated running personal errands in uniform. He always ran into somebody who would make some crack about how he was using the taxpayer’s dime.

He had a mountain of paperwork covering his ugly gray metal desk, stuff he’d been putting off and putting off until it had become a full day’s job. When he’d bitched about it to Harlene, she told him if he’d worked at it a little at a time, he wouldn’t be staring down the barrel now, which he already knew, which made him even more pissy.

And now this little gem. Circled in red in the Post-Star courtesy of Officer Pollack, who always brought in his copy before his shift. Russ had been expecting the article about the baby, of course. He’d given the beat reporter an interview, explaining what the police were doing to find the mother, saying the boy had been found “outside an area church” and omitting all mention of the note tucked in the box with the baby. She had gotten the resident from the hospital to describe the overall good health of the child. And a line from the Department of Social Services confirming the baby was being placed with an experienced foster mother.

The usual stuff. What was making him grip his coffee mug to keep from throwing it across the room was the paragraph devoted to the Burnses. How the hell the reporter had found out about them he didn’t know, but there it all was, in glorious black and white: Saint Alban’s, the note, Burns complaining about DSS, and a plea to the mother to contact the couple directly. “We only want to help,” Karen Burns was quoted. “We believe what the mother did was courageous, not criminal.”

He looked out his window, almost lost between the bulletins and WANTED posters and advisories taped up all over his wall, and watched the hard, dry snow spitting through the air. Temperature dropping, cold night tonight. He thought about Cody-No-Last-Name, thought about what might have happened if Reverend Fergusson hadn’t been heading out for a run that night. Maybe whoever had left the baby had been nearby, watching and waiting for someone to discover the box. Maybe not. Courageous. Yeah.

The phone rang. Through the frosted glass window in his door, he could see Harlene’s outline as she crossed the office to pick it up. A moment later his line buzzed. “Hey, Harlene, can you get me some more coffee while I take this?” he yelled. He couldn’t hear her reply distinctly, but he thought it was something about being the dispatcher, not a geisha girl. He lifted the receiver.

“Chief Van Alstyne? Clare Fergusson. I hope I’m not calling at a bad time.”

“No, no,” he said, “Not at all. I’m staring at about a thousand state and county reports I’m supposed to have filled out sometime in November and I’m contemplating whether I can throw Geoff Burns in jail for interfering with an investigation. I can use a break.”

“You’re contemplating what?”

“I take it you haven’t read today’s paper. The article about the abandoned baby.”

“No. It’s here somewhere . . .” There was a rustling and a thumping sound. “Got it. Where is it?”

“Right on page three. Take a look at where Geoff Burns offers his protection and free legal services to the mother!”

There was silence on the other end of the line. “Holy crow,” Clare said after a moment.

“Yeah. After I had deliberately left out the note and the location where Cody was found. It’ll serve that little weasel right when he starts getting crank calls from half the teenagers in the county, claiming to be the baby’s mother.”

“Is that what you mean by interfering with an investigation? Because, you know, if the reporter had come to me, I wouldn’t have known I wasn’t supposed to say anything about the note.”

“It’s not just that, Reverend . . . Clare. This crap about protecting the mother from misguided officials. Burns might as well come right out and say ‘Come to us, and we’ll see the police never lay a hand on you.’ What are they gonna do, give her ten thousand and ship her off to Bolivia? Geez, that really frosts my cookies.” There was a strangled sound from the other end of the line. After a moment, he realized Clare was trying not to laugh. “Well, it does.”

“I’m sorry, it’s really not funny.” She snickered. “ ‘Frosts my cookies’?”

“Now you know one of our quaint local expressions.” The sound of her muffled laughter took the edge off his anger. He sighed.

“Okay. Do you really think that Karen and Geoff might make contact with the mother and not tell you?”

“Yes.”

Now she sighed. “Me, too. Is there anything you can do now the information about where Cody was found is out in the open? You can’t really mean to arrest the Burnses.”

“I’d like to. At least, I’d like to arrest Geoff Burns. Jesus Christ, what an arrogant little snot. Sorry.” Russ held the newspaper out at arm’s length to reread the paragraph. “But no, I don’t have any grounds. As much as he’s pushing the line, he hasn’t gone over it. There’s nothing illegal about giving your opinion on what the mother did or in offering free legal aid.”

“So you can’t put the proverbial cat back in the bag. That leaves the problem of the mother turning to the Burnses for help instead of turning herself in to the police.”

“There is that problem, yes.”

“What if you offered to help them get the baby?”

“What?”

“They want to be Cody’s foster parents now. Think about it. That way, they not only have the note in their favor, they also will have bonded with Cody. They’ll be able to argue it’s in his best interests to stay with them.”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“I think they’ll be less anxious about who finds the mother first if they have Cody already. You can offer to use your influence with the Department of Social Services to get the baby assigned to them. In exchange, they promise to let you know right away if the mother contacts them.”

“My influence with DSS, huh?”

“Oh, c’mon. You must know a few people.” Her slight Southern drawl was more noticable over the phone, he thought. “I’ll tell you, I’m under the gun here, too. My vestry wants St. Alban’s to pitch in and help the Burnses. I’ve decided to get a letter-writing campaign going among the parishioners. All the well-heeled Republicans here? There must be a few who’ve donated enough to make some politicians sit up and listen when they ask for a little consideration for this deserving couple, who have waited so patiently for so long to be a family.”

He whistled. “You’re good. You ever think of running for office?”

She snorted. “Preachers and politicians are kissin’ cousins, didn’t you know that?”

“I guess it’s worth a try. Anything’s better than waiting for Geoff Burns to get ahold of some scared kid and wave money in her face to make her disappear. When were you planning to enlist your letter-writing troops?”

“Putting it into my sermon this Sunday would be the simplest thing. Dang, and I was going to preach on what I saw going on patrol with you this Friday. Maybe I can work them both in . . .” There was a pause. “Um . . . you haven’t changed your mind, have you? About taking me?”

“If I had, I’ve been effectively wangled into taking you now, huh?”

Clare groaned. “I didn’t mean it that way . . .”

Russ laughed. “Guess I’d better keep my end of the bargain, or you might get your parishioners to write to the aldermen and have me tossed out on my ear. What time can I pick you up?”

“Evening Prayer’s at five-fifteen, so I’ll be free by six.”

“Six is good. Wear a coat this time, okay? And some heavy boots.”

“I’ll bring two pair of mittens and electric socks. I’m really looking forward to seeing the authentic Millers Kill, Chief. Thank you.”

“It’s Russ, remember? And don’t thank me until the night’s over. You may be so bored, collecting stacks of letters might seem like a big thrill.”

Standing behind the patrol car’s open door, Clare banged her knees together and kicked her feet against the front tire, hoping to keep her circulation going. Wishing she were in her office, writing letters.

“I didn’t do nuthin’! Get your hands off me!” In front of a large video arcade, Russ was toe to toe with an angry, drunken young man. The kid was several inches over six feet, as tall as the police chief, and beefy. Clare glanced at the radio. On television cop shows, people were always calling for backup. Was she supposed to do that? How? She stomped her feet a few more times. If she had stayed home, she could be sitting down to the ten o’clock news with a cup of hot chocolate right now.

Teens were crowded along the sidewalk outside the arcade. Its huge picture windows blazed with neon signs and the hypnotic flash of the cruiser’s red lights, giving the place a cinematic, high-tech look that jarred badly with the no-nonsense blue-collar bars and the depressed little shops that were its neighbors. The chief was leaning forward, talking to the kid in low tones. Not touching him, but ready to move if he had to. She couldn’t hear what he was saying over the insistent bass thumping from the inside of the arcade.

Clare scanned the crowd, looking for any sign of someone else willing to take on trouble. She shivered inside the roomy police parka that Russ had loaned her. When she had stepped out of the church in her leather bomber jacket, he had laughed at it. Sure enough, within an hour she was begging for something warmer. At the station house, where they dropped off a drunk driver Russ had arrested, Harlene dug through the lockers and emerged with a regulation brown parka large enough to fit a moose. Or the young man who had been brawling in the arcade.

Russ leaned back, said something, crossed his arms. The kid hung his head, and for the first time, Clare could see an oversized boy instead of a threat. From the crowd, another boy sporting several piercings said something she couldn’t make out. The kids around him laughed. Russ snapped his head around and pointed a finger at them, bellowing, “You damn well bet he is. And that’s what’s gonna keep him alive past seventeen. How about you, mister?” The boys in the group visibly shrank back. “I don’t want to hear any more from you, got it?” A few nods.

Russ beckoned to two teens who had been hovering near him during the confrontation. Clare couldn’t make out his words, but it looked as if he was putting the troublemaker in their care. One of the boys clapped an arm around his inebriated friend. Russ pinned the big kid with a glare, raising his voice so everyone could hear. “If I have to come here again tonight, I’m arresting anybody involved. Got it?” There was a shuffle-footed assent from the crowd. “Good. Now get inside or go home. It’s too damn cold to be hanging out here on the sidewalk.”

Russ trudged through the slush at the curbside and tugged open his door. He looked wearily across the roof at Clare, the whirling lights emphasizing the lines in his face. He seemed older than he had at the start of the night’s patrol. “Idiot kids,” he muttered, sliding behind the wheel. Clare gently kicked against her door, knocking snow off her boots before joining him inside the car.

“You’re not going to arrest the boy who was fighting?”

“Ethan? Naw. He didn’t hurt anybody.” Russ reached for the radio. “Ten-fifty, this is Ten-fifty-seven.”

“Come in, Ten-fifty-seven.”

“Harlene, will you call the Stoners and tell them to pick up Ethan at Videotek? And tell ’em he missed a drunk and disorderly by the skin of his teeth.”

“Will do, Chief.”

“We’re headed out to the kill. See if there are any other kids out tonight making fools of themselves. Ten-fifty-seven out.”

“At the kill. Ten-fifty out.”

He hung up the microphone and fastened his seatbelt.

“You have got to tell me something.” Clare buckled herself in. “What, exactly, is the kill?”

“Huh?” He glanced at her. “You mean, like in Millers Kill?”

“Yeah. What is it?”

“Kill’s the old Dutch name for a shallow river or a big creek. Lotta towns around upstate have ‘kill’ in their names—Fishes Kill, Eddys Kill . . . our kill runs from the Hudson to the Mohawk Canal.”

“A big creek? I’ve crossed over it a few times and it looks more like a full-fledged river.”

“It was dredged out during the building of the canal system in the early eighteen hundreds. Between the river traffic and the mills, it made the town. Geez, you’re gonna live here, you need to learn some geography and history. I’ll see if I can find you a few books to read.”

He shifted and pulled into traffic. They headed west, cruising slowly down the strip, past bars, a liquor store, a tightly shuttered pawn shop. No candy canes and reindeer hanging from the battered old light poles here.

“Why didn’t you take the boy in?” she asked.

“I know the Stoners. His dad has a thirty-five, forty acre dairy farm that barely supports the family. Ethan’s not a bad kid.” Russ signaled, turned down a narrow street, and drove past two dark, boarded-up warehouses. Another turn took them into the parking lots behind the buildings. The headlights picked out churned-up snow and tire tracks crisscrossing randomly. “He’s just like a hundred other kids in this area. They drink, they do drugs, they get into car wrecks and fights because they’ve got nothing to do with their lives.”

Russ swung the cruiser slowly out of the shadowy parking lot. The rear of the car slid in the snow, and he eased into the skid. “Nothing around here for average kids with high school diplomas and no money for college.” Back on Mill Street, the cruiser turned west again. Clare watched through the window as the commercial buildings gave way to shabby-genteel houses. Homemade signs hammered into snow-covered lawns gave mute testimony to the struggle to make ends meet: LITTLE LAMBS DAY CARE. DOLLHOUSES BUILT TO ORDER. PLOWING AND HAULING. DEER DRESSED OUT.

“Thirty years ago, that boy could have gone straight into one of the textile mills and made a good wage. Or gone to work for one of the big dairy farms in the area, saved up his money to buy land of his own. Or gone into the army.” Russ pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “Voluntarily or not, it gave a guy a chance to learn a trade or get money for college.”

The houses were fewer and farther apart. They drove past the last streetlight into the darkness. “This is Route One-Thirty-Seven. We call it the Cossayaharie Road,” he said. The pines and alders crowded in along the road, and beyond the trees, the Adirondack piedmont closed the horizon around them. The dark bulk of the hills looked like breaching whales outlined in starlight, old and powerful.

The car cocooned them in warmth, made them fellow travelers into the wilderness. Clare unzipped her parka and stretched her legs. The glow from the dashboard picked out Russ’s large, blunt hands, securely controlling the steering wheel. “Thirty years ago, you could get married and buy a house and have a family once you got out of school. And you didn’t have to leave the area to do it. But nowadays, there’s nothing for Ethan Stoner to do when he graduates next spring except maybe flip burgers part time. So he drives his old beater too fast and gets into fights and goes down to Albany to party with his buddies who’ve already left for good.”

He turned the cruiser into a narrow lane overhung with snowy branches. The road was noticeably bumpier. They were silent, Russ peering forward to negotiate the barely plowed road, Clare considering Ethan Stoner. They came to a dead end in a clearing marked by a few tire tracks.

She stared into the snow and darkness. “Where are we?”

Russ opened the door. Cold air rushed around the unzipped edges of her parka. “This is the lot for Payson’s Park,” he said, reaching behind her seat for two long, heavy flashlights. “In the summertime, the town puts out picnic benches and grills, and somebody always ties a few tire swings to the big branches overhanging the kill. It’s real nice.”

She accepted a flashlight and got out. “There aren’t any cars here,” she pointed out. “Don’t tell me your young lovers are rolling in the snow somewhere. I know teenagers are hot-blooded, but . . .”

Russ walked through the beams from the headlight toward the edge of the clearing. “There’s a trail that runs along the river for several miles. When I was a kid, you went on foot or you didn’t go at all, but nowadays everybody’s got four-wheel drive. And here we are, tire tracks.”

He aimed the light into the woods and Clare could see where the trail ran past the open picnic area and over a rise. They tromped forward, following the tire tracks marring the otherwise untouched snow.

“Half a mile upstream there’s an abandoned railroad bridge that crosses over the kill. That’s another spot we like to keep an eye on, for drinking or doing drugs. There’s a sheer slate embankment from the old train bed to underneath the bridge. A lot of people would rather get there by driving the trail instead of risking the climb down.”

“I can’t help think there must be more comfortable places to have a drink,” she said. Her breath hung in the air, glowing in the reflected light of her flashlight.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, ducking to avoid a snow-heavy branch. “But Napoli’s Discount Liquors and the infamous Dew Drop Inn are less than a mile up the road, offering a last crack at booze before you cross the town line into Cossayaharie. Which is one of the last dry towns in New York State.”

“So the good people of Cossayaharie drink here in the park instead?”

“Don’t know if I’d say the good people, but—”

Clare slipped where the trail took a downward turn, and Russ caught her arm, steadying her. She added boots with serious treads to her growing list of things to buy.

“Watch it,” he said, pointing his light to the left. The land sloped steeply down to the half-frozen edge of the river, visible between tangled bushes and slim stands of trees. “You don’t want to fall in in this weather.” She nodded and walked more slowly, staying between the tire tracks, emulating Russ’s steady tread. “I remember last year, some idiot came out here to jack deer, fell in the kill instead, and nearly died from the hypothermia. ’Course, it didn’t help that he’d been keeping himself entertained with blackberry brandy.”

“Jack deer?” She caught a flash of something dark and gleaming near the water. A deer? She aimed her flashlight toward the thicket it might be hiding in.

“Poaching. At night. If you shine a light into a deer’s eyes you can freeze it long enough to shoot.”

The gleam looked funny, familiar but out of place. She moved the beam of light to the right. And saw a hand, barely distinguishable from the snow it rested on. The dark gleam, that was hair. That was someone’s long, dark—

“Russ,” she said.

“What?”

“Russ,” she repeated. She pointed, part of her amazed at how steadily she was holding the flashlight. “Down there.”

“Oh my God!” he said. He scrambled down the slope, falling and sliding and catching at trees. “Oh Jesus, oh God, oh Jesus, no.” He yanked a bush almost out of the ground, stopping his headlong descent before he plunged into the water. Clare held her light tightly. She wasn’t sure if she could move it at this point. Russ squatted in the snow and bent over the . . . her mind tried to slide over the word “body.”

“Oh no. Oh, Jesus, oh no.” He hunkered down for a moment. She could see him backlit by the glow of his flashlight, shaking his head over and over. Then he straightened, wiped his face. Turned toward her. “It’s a girl. She’s dead.”

CHAPTER 4

Clare pressed her gloved fist against her mouth. Her flashlight never wavered. Russ pointed his light up at her, making her eyes sting and blink. “Clare? Are you okay?”

She nodded. She couldn’t see him, but she could feel him looking at her, realized he might not see the small movement.

“Yes. I’m okay,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Can you make it back up the trail to the car and call for help? I’m going to have to secure the area now, see if I can find anything before—before they get here to take her out.”

“Turn on the radio and ask for Harlene?”

“Yeah. Tell her we’ve found a body off the trail, about a quarter mile upstream from Payson’s Park. Can you do that?” She nodded again. “Good girl,” he said.

Clare couldn’t stop herself from looking at that hand once more, so pale and still it might have been carved out of snow. Snow on snow, the old hymn went. Snow on snow. She could make out some kind of sleeve, disappearing into the tangled brush. Whoever it was must be half in the water. Did she jump? Had she changed her mind and tried to crawl out? Clare blinked the blurriness out of her eyes and filled her lungs with sharp, dry air. She headed up the trail, jogging as quickly as she could in the snow. The trees crowded in against the path. She slipped and slid, trying to keep her footing and not break her pace. There was an explosion of snow from her left. She yelped and almost dropped her flashlight. A doe leaped into the beam of light and vanished again in another shower of snow. Clare staggered, her heart about to hammer its way out of her chest.

She made it to the cruiser finally, her knees aching from several falls, sweaty and hot under her borrowed parka. She slid into the car and flicked on the radio, and when she heard the dispatcher’s hail she keyed the mike and said exactly what Russ had told her. Harlene put her on hold for what seemed like an eternity.

“Okay, Reverend, I’ve got an ambulance on the way and I’ve notified Doctor Dvorak. He’ll be waiting at the county morgue. Officer Flynn is headed out to lend a hand, and the state troopers are sending a technician along with a crime scene van. Can you sit tight and lead them to the chief when they get there?”

Clare keyed the mike again. “Yes, I’ll be here.”

“Are you okay, Reverend?”

“Yeah, Harlene. Thanks for asking. I’ll be fine.”

“Good girl. Dispatch out.”

Clare stripped off her gloves and blew on her fingers. She could remember the time when she would have torn into anyone who called her a girl. At thirty-five she was finally mellowing. Had Russ seen a woman down there in the snow and ice? Or was it really a girl? She yanked her coat around her, her exercise-induced heat seeping away in the chill of the car. As cold and as still as the grave.

Clare leaned her cheek against the rigid vinyl of the car seat. She shut her eyes very tightly, trying to put the sight of that white hand, that dark hair somewhere she could bear it. Did something drive that woman out here to end her own life? Something inside her so dark and cold that the moonless night and the icy water seemed preferable? Merciful God. That was the start of the collect she would pray tomorrow, looking at the comfortable, satisfied faces of her congregation. Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace . . . Give us Grace . . . she felt hot tears behind her eyelids. Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins . . .

She was exhausted, numb and sleepy when the squad car and ambulance pulled into the lot. The flare of red lights against her closed eyes jerked her into alertness and prodded her out of the car before her mind had caught up with her body. She shuffled through the snow, waving to a uniformed man who must have been Officer Flynn levering himself from his squad car. Next to the car, two paramedics in bulky snowsuits jumped from the ambulance. Clare slogged over to the officer.

“Ma’am,” Flynn greeted her. “I’m awful sorry you had to see something like this.” She echoed the sentiment silently. The doors to the ambulance clanged open. The EMTs hauled a rescue pallet off the van bed.

“If you follow me, I can take you to the chief,” she said. Her voice seemed unnaturally loud in the still, cold air. Flynn opened the trunk of his car and hefted a canvas bag over his shoulder. As they began their slippery processional, he fished into the bag and retrieved a self-starting flare. He yanked the tab and the clearing lit up with a harsh chemical glare. Flynn stuck the flare butt-end into the snow beside the trail.

The EMTs balanced the pallet between them, picking their way through snow as they pushed on toward the water. Every few yards Flynn lit another flare. The trail resembled a nightmare version of a garden walkway illuminated by torches for the benefit of evening strollers. Clare kept her eyes on the tracks as they walked, tire marks crisscrossing at the edges of the trail, two sets of boot prints leading downward, small, deep holes left by deer hooves, and blurry disturbances where she had fallen in her headlong rush to get back to the cruiser.

“There,” she said, pointing down the steep slope where a single flashlight beam appeared and disappeared through the pines.

“Chief?” yelled Officer Flynn. Clare pointed her flashlight toward the water.

“Yeah!”

She shifted her light toward his voice and nailed him straight on with the light. Russ threw his hand in front of his face. “I’ll come up! Don’t anybody climb down until we’ve gotten some photographs of the tracks.”

Flynn pulled the tab on another flare. The trail sprang into high relief. The trees cast hard, dark shadows downslope, concealing and revealing glimpses of Russ’s brown parka as he clambered back up the hill. Clare could hear him grunting with effort. By the time he reached them, he was breathing hard.

“Are you all right?” she asked, peering up into his face.

He leaned against a birch tree, panting. “Been up and down this damn stretch of ground about six times already,” he said. “Jesus, I’m getting too old for this kind of thing. Sorry, Clare.” He sketched a wave to the two paramedics. “Guys, you can retrieve the body just as soon as the state crime lab gets here.”

Flynn stared down at the water’s edge, craning his neck for a better view. “What’s it look like, Chief? Not a jumper moved downstream?”

Russ tilted his head toward Clare. “Every once in a while somebody decides to check out by jumping off the old railroad bridge,” he explained. He turned away from the officer and shone his flashlight a couple of yards up the trail. Clare could see where the tire tracks they had been following came to an end. “Somebody drove in to this point and then backed up again.” He shifted the light to the edge of the trail closest to the water.

“What’s that?” Clare asked. The snow was heavily churned.

“That is where the girl slid all the way down the slope.” Russ sounded worn down. “I followed the trail she left back up to the car tracks. Looks just like when little kids roll themselves down a hill.”

Flynn whistled, a high, excited sound. Russ glared at him. “Sorry, Chief,” the young officer replied. “Just . . . I haven’t done a homicide yet.”

“Homicide?” Clare looked down toward the water. “Someone killed her?”

“Looks that way,” Russ said.

Clare touched Russ’s arm, heavy glove over thick parka. “Any clear tracks from whoever drove the car away?” she said.

He shook his head. “Nope. Could be whoever it was threw her body down the hill, hoping she’d land in the kill and disappear for a while. Or it could be she and the driver got into a fight while they were standing here, he hauls off and clips her one, and she falls down the hill. He panics and drives away.”

Clare shook her head. “Dear God.” She shivered. “Imagine lying there hurt, unable to move or help yourself, and seeing the car lights disappearing . . .”

“Don’t. Don’t think about it too much,” Russ broke in. “We won’t know anything until the coroner’s report. Don’t start speculating or you’ll make yourself crazy.”

She looked up at him. “The voice of experience?”

“The voice of experience,” he agreed. They both looked into the darkness at the creek’s edge. Impossible to tell, from here, what was rock and what was shadow and what was water. “There’s something else,” Russ said.

“What?”

“I think this murder may be connected to the baby you found.”

“What? Why on earth would you—”

“Because I have two unusual, unexplainable events happening back to back. A girl abandons a baby. Now a girl shows up dead. This isn’t New York City, where kids are stuffed into trash cans and Jane Does turn up twice a week. This is my town. This sort of thing doesn’t happen in my town.” She cocked an eye at him. He swung his arms wide in frustration. “I mean, of course it happens, obviously it has, but it sure as hell makes the back of my neck crawl. Which is my brain’s way of telling me to keep my eyes open.”

A halloo echoed further up the trail. A state trooper, bundled up to his ears and wearing his distinctive hat over a knit balaclava, heaved into view around the bend, lugging a chest. “Chief Van Alstyne?” he shouted.

“Yeah, here,” Russ called. “Kevin, go on and help him with that.” Flynn loped back up the trail and took one end of the box. When they reached the chief, they dropped the chest, stenciled PROPERTY NYSP CRIME SCENE UNIT and the trooper pulled off a glove to shake hands with Russ.

“Sergeant Hayes,” he said. “How can I help you, Chief?”

“We need photos, mostly, starting here, where the tire tracks terminate,” Russ led the technician toward the site of the disturbance, careful to put his feet into his old boot prints, “and here, where she fell, or they fought, and the slope . . .” he pointed down toward where the body lay hidden. Hayes nodded. “And then let’s get her in situ as quickly as we can, so these fellows can take her over to the morgue and our doctor can take a look at her.”

They backtracked to the others. Hayes opened the crime-scene chest and began digging out lights and camera parts. Russ pulled Clare to one side. “Why don’t you take my keys and go back to the car,” he said. “At least one of us can stay warm. I’d have Kevin drive you back, but I may need him here . . .”

Clare shook her head. “I’d rather stay. At least until you bring her up. I’ll walk with her back to the ambulance.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to. I need to.”

He looked at her for a long moment. The reddish lights from the flares were like the last glorious minutes of a sunset falling across his face.

He smiled faintly. “I think I like the way you work, Reverend.” Clare shrugged one shoulder and looked away, embarrassed at getting extra credit for just doing the right thing. “Okay,” he said. “Stay back out of the way and don’t let your feet get numb.”

By the time Sergeant Hayes had photographed every mark in the snow, and the chief and Officer Flynn had gone over every branch and every tree for hairs and fibers, Clare had stomped a circle of snow into packed ice. No wonder cop shows never portrayed this part of the job. It was mind-alteringly dull to watch. If she hadn’t had to keep moving in order not to freeze, she might have fallen asleep. Hard to keep that edge of horror over the death of another human being when it was surrounded by so much tedious scutwork.

The paramedics, who had waited a lot more comfortably thanks to their arctic-weight snowsuits, skidded down the slope in a zigzag pattern, dragging the pallet behind them. Clare watched as they conferred with the police officers at the water’s edge.

“Okay,” someone said, “let’s do it.”

“One . . . two . . . three . . .” said another voice. There was a cracking sound. Someone grunted.

“Watch the water, watch the water!”

“Got ’er. Okay, okay, let go now.”

Russ detached himself from the group and hiked up the slope to Clare. The paramedics followed, with Hayes and Flynn behind them in case they slipped. The figure strapped onto the pallet looked like something out of a fairy tale, white skin and dark hair, a train of servants and attendants. The flares’ glow gave the scene an otherworldly cast.

When they reached the trail, the paramedics came close to tipping the pallet as they slipped carrying harnesses over their shoulders. “Be careful with her,” Russ snapped. Clare had been bracing herself for a disfigured death, but the body was more like a statue of a pretty, round-faced girl, asleep with her head fallen to one side. There were leaves frozen into her long hair. Clare looked at Russ. “May I touch her?” she asked.

He nodded. “Carefully. Don’t move her.” Clare made the sign of the cross on the girl’s marble forehead.

Hayes leaned over toward Russ. “Thought you said she wasn’t related to the decedent,” he whispered too loudly.

“She’s a priest,” Russ whispered back.

The state trooper looked at Clare, startled. “Ma’am?” he said. “I mean, Reverend.” Clare closed her eyes for a moment. She really, really didn’t want to do her song and dance about women priests at this point. “I’m a Christian, ma’am,” he continued, “and I’d be glad to join you in prayer.”

She looked up to meet Russ’s gaze straight on. She wasn’t going to ask permission. Their eyes locked for a moment before he nodded almost imperceptibly. “Thank you, Sergeant Hayes,” she said. She spread her arms wide across the girl’s body. “Let us pray,” she said. The men bowed their heads. “Depart, O soul, out of this world; in the name of the Creator who first made you; in the name of the Redeemer who ransomed you; in the name of the Sustainer who sanctifies you.” She laid her hand across the girl’s icy chest. “May your rest this day be in peace, and your dwelling place in the Paradise of God.”

There was a ragged chorus of “Amens.” Russ reached past one of the EMTs and pulled a blanket free from the foot of the pallet.

“Chief?” Flynn said.

Russ shook out the blanket and laid it over the girl. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s all get out of here.” Clare let Hayes and Flynn take the lead up the trail, following behind the paramedics and their burden. Russ fell into step beside her. “Don’t believe in God, you know,” he said.

“Mmmm hmmm,” she said.

“Never saw any use for organized religion, either,” he said.

“No,” she said.

“But I do believe that everybody deserves a basic respect as a human being.”

“Even the dead.”

They trudged on silently. “Maybe especially the dead,” Russ said at last.

Clare nodded. “I like the way you pray,” she said. Russ shook his head, smiling faintly. “The last thing any of us can do for the dead is to show respect.”

“No. The last thing any of us can do for the dead is give them justice.”

She breathed in sharply and scrubbed the back of her glove against the sudden prickle of tears stinging her eyes. “Yes,” she said, after she knew her voice would be steady. “You’re right. We owe the dead justice.”

CHAPTER 5

The Burnses’ Range Rover was already parked in the lot across the street by the time Clare arrived to unlock the parish hall for their nine o’clock meeting. Fumbling with the heavy chain of keys, she paused to check her watch. She knew she was running behind, but even so, she prided herself on always being prompt. Her old steel Seiko, hanging from its olive-twill strap, read 8:55. The Burnses must not have wanted to linger around the house this morning. Well, neither had she.

Last night, Clare had slept badly, dreaming of Grace for the first time in seven or eight months. When she dragged herself out of bed, still aching with weariness, she went for a long run along Route 51, the river running slow and wide to the old mills on her left, the mountains in front of her, shell-pink and cotton-candy blue in the first light. She ran herself hard in an attempt to outpace the images of angry teenagers, surly drunks, and most of all, the snow-white face of the dead girl. Later, in her shower, she let the hot water soak into her bones, trying to quiet her mind enough to hear the small, inward voice that would tell her which way to go. What to do. In her experience, hard knowledge, painful knowledge, was a gift. God’s way of pushing aside the distractions, the self-centeredness, leaving the right way clear, open, marked for travel.

The heavy chunk of the Range Rover doors brought her back to the moment. The Burnses headed across the parking lot toward the back of the church. In their casual coats, jeans, and sweaters, they looked perfectly turned out for a Saturday morning, like models on the cover of a J. Crew catalogue. Younger, and more vulnerable than they seemed in their weekday suits or Sunday clothes. Clare succeeded in unlocking the medieval-looking door and bumped it open with her hip.

“Good morning,” she said, juggling her thermos to shake hands.

The Burnses returned her greeting, looking at her attire curiously. “Reverend Clare,” Karen asked, “are you moonlighting with the police department?”

Clare plucked at the large brown parka she was wearing. “Oh. This. Chief Van Alstyne loaned this to me last night. I forgot to return it. I have to confess, it’s so much warmer than any of the coats I brought with me, I’m tempted to permanently forget to return it.”

Karen nodded. “You used to have to go into Saratoga to get anything to wear,” she said, “but in the past few years some wonderful stores have moved into Millers Kill. I’d be happy to take you shopping some time if you like.”

Clare looked at the lawyer’s beautifully-made felt coat, which appeared to have been hand-appliqued by Austrian nuns. Probably the same nuns who did the detailed knitting on her designer sweater. Clare had the feeling she couldn’t afford Karen’s wonderful little stores.

“Shall we go inside?” Geoff asked. “Ladies?” he tacked on a moment later. They scuffed their boots on the protective mats that reached six feet into the parish hall.

“I brought some breakfast pastries,” Karen said, holding up a neatly folded white bag. “There’s a place on Main Street called ‘In the Dough’ that does the most wonderful croissants. Not to mention real bagels.”

Clare thought of the donut shop Russ had insisted on taking her to last night. “You can’t be a cop if you don’t eat donuts,” he had said, ushering her into the Kreemie Kakes Diner. He had spun out an elaborate theory that people’s personalities could be revealed by the type of donuts they ate. That the choice of jelly donut versus French cruller could unveil the secrets of a person’s soul. She had laughed at the time, but watching Karen pull an exquisitely puffed mini-muffin out of the bag, she wondered if he might not be on to something after all. She opened her door and let the Burnses precede her into her office.

“Oh, my,” Karen said. They both stopped inside the doorway and looked around slowly. “It certainly is different from when Father Hames was here.”

“Yes,” Clare agreed, thinking of the unrelieved English-country style that had been her predecessor’s office. “It’s a nice space to display some of my collections.” Over the fireplace that dominated the wall opposite the door, she had hung an intricately carved fragment from a Spanish rood screen, brightly colored Southwestern santos, olivewood bas-reliefs from the Middle East, and Pacific Island fabric-printing blocks. A pair of leather chairs that had originally furnished the admiral’s wardroom of a World War Two destroyer—her most spectacular military surplus find ever—were pulled up cozily in front of the fireplace. The large Victorian desk against the far wall was a hand-me-down from Father Hames, but Clare had replaced his oil paintings of stags and spaniels with aeronautical sectional charts and aircraft design blueprints. They shared space on the wall opposite the fireplace with several gilt-framed flea-market mirrors. Clare was very pleased with that touch, since they reflected the light from the west-facing windows flanking the chimneypiece and made the whole room glow at sunset.

“Huh,” Geoff Burns said.

“How unique,” Karen added quickly.

To the left of the door, a slightly saggy love seat faced the leather chairs. It was a donation Clare suspected hadn’t moved at the church’s last rummage sale. “Please, sit down,” she said, hanging her borrowed parka on the coatrack behind the door. The Burnses followed suit.

Clare dropped her bag on her desk and unscrewed the top from her thermos. In front of the built-in bookcase, Geoff Burns was staring at an Apache helicopter clock her brother Brian had given her for a gag, and Karen was peering at a photo of Clare in T-shirt and camouflage pants. “Is this . . . you?” she asked.

Clare smoothly pushed a mug decorated with a flying rattlesnake and the logo: DEATH FROM THE SKY! out of sight and poured her coffee into a Virginia Seminary mug instead. “That was me,” she said. “Several years ago.” She sat in a leather chair. “Let’s talk about this idea Chief Van Alstyne had for getting Cody into your foster care.”

Geoff took the love seat. “Van Alstyne’s idea? When he called me, it sounded like your idea. He made it pretty clear that the only reason he was behind it was to make sure we would let him know if Cody’s mother contacted us.”

“We were both thinking along the same lines, then.”

Karen sat down in the other leather chair. “I talked to Chief Van Alstyne, too, and I’ll tell you what I told him. There’s nothing wrong, or illegal, about Geoff and me helping out Cody’s birth mother.”

“I’m not suggesting there is. You two want Cody. From all we know, the mother—the birth mother—wants you to have Cody. And we all want to ensure that Cody has a good home with loving parents and that the girl who gave birth to him gets whatever help she needs, whether it be medical, or legal, or counseling. It would be an untruth to say we can guarantee a win-win situation—”

“Of course not!” Geoff interrupted. “What’s to prevent a scatter-brained teenager who put him in a box in the first place from deciding, on a whim, that she wants him back? You’ve never dealt with DSS, Reverend Clare. You have no idea what those people are like. They act as if genetics were sacred destiny. If they get their hands on the birth mother, they’ll do everything in their power to persuade her to hang onto the baby. It doesn’t matter to them if she’s underaged, if she lives in a dump, if she’s going to be a welfare breeder all her life. In their book, providing the egg and sperm for a child is more important than providing him with a good life. I’m sick of it.”

Clare sat back, blinking.

“Geoff is so right,” Karen said. “We’ve been up one side and down another with them.” She opened her arms, encompassing herself and her husband. “Just as a logical starting point, wouldn’t you say we were better parent prospects than a girl who would leave a baby out in the cold on the back steps to the church kitchen?”

Clare nodded. “As a logical starting point. Yes.” She took a sip of her coffee. “Why do you think DSS hasn’t given you Cody to foster at this time?”

“Because we’ve put up a stink before,” Geoff said. “When they returned that baby girl we told you about to her abusive mother, we went to the press, we took them to court—”

“It was a nightmare,” Karen said.

“If you kowtow to DSS, they might throw you a bone now and again, but if you stand up to their fascist bureaucracy and let others know what they’re doing wrong, you get on their enemies’ list.”

“We knew a couple, the Baldaccis, who ran a home for pregnant teens, a wonderful, caring place. They’d help these girls adopt out or find help for them if they wanted to keep their babies. A few years ago, they fostered a very troubled girl who kept her baby after it was born. She got into trouble later, DSS took the child away, and then, after one of their so-called parental re-education courses, they reunited mother and child. The Baldaccis wrote the caseworker and called her, they sent letters to everyone they knew in DSS warning them that the girl was unstable and the baby would be in danger. Six weeks after what DSS deemed a successful reunification, she murdered the baby.”

“Oh, my God. How horrible!”

“Yes, but that’s not the end of it. The Baldaccis were so outraged at this utterly needless death, they went public with the whole story. Despite the fact that they were the only home for pregnant teens in Washington county, DSS yanked their license and shut them down.”

“That’s outrageous,” Clare said.

“So you can see why we’re not eager for them to get their hands on the birth mother,” Geoff said.

“We’ve already filed suit requesting temporary custody of Cody,” Karen said, “but we talked it over, and we think it might be helpful to have members of the congregation write letters in our favor to DSS.”

“Especially if anyone knows someone personally they can write to, or call. A state senator, or a member of the governor’s staff, or someone on the board of governors for Social Services.” Geoff braced his elbows on his knees and cracked his knuckles. “You know, Reverend, when we first started trying to have a baby, I swore we’d do it ourselves, with no help from anybody, doctor or adoption agency. But now?” He scowled. “What the hell. Let’s get everyone involved. Maybe someone in the congregation has a friend of a friend who knows Senator Schumer. Whatever it takes to get the baby into our home as soon as possible.”

“Okay,” Clare said. “At the end of my sermon tomorrow, I’ll ask the congregation for help. We’ll need some sort of directory, something that gives addresses that people can write to.” She reached for one of the croissants Karen had laid out on the flattened bag. “We can just squeak it into the December newsletter if you can get the information to Lois by Monday.” She bit off a chunk of croissant, showering her lap with buttery flakes. Her eyes widened at the taste.

“Wonderful,” Karen said. For a moment, Clare didn’t know if she was talking about the bread or the plan. “I have a good feeling about this. I think having the backing of the whole congregation will make this time different.”

Clare devoured the rest of the croissant and brushed the flakes off her lap. “I’d like to talk about the other half of this matter. The part that Chief Van Alstyne brought up with you. Have you thought about what happens when Cody’s mother shows up? From what I understand, the mothers in this sort of abandonment case are almost always caught, or turn themselves in.”

“That’s why we need custody now,” Geoff said. “We’ll need to be able to argue that the baby has bonded with us, that she is an unfit mother, and that the child’s best interests will be served by remaining with us.”

“That’s a little harsh, isn’t it?”

“Reverend, finding a healthy white infant in this country is a harsh business. It’s not for the squeamish, or for people who aren’t willing to play hardball.”

“And besides, maybe the mother won’t turn up.” Geoff and Clare both looked at Karen.

“That’s an unrealistic attitude to take, Kar. We have to position ourselves strategically to win against her, not cross our fingers and hope she’s disappeared for good.”

There was one more croissant left, and Clare snagged it, wondering what it said about her personality.

“Of course. You’re right. It’s just I believe that Cody is the one. I just know he’s meant to be ours.” Karen beamed. Clare hoped that all their focus and intensity wouldn’t end in disappointment. Who could say? If passion and commitment made for good parents, the Burnses would be the best thing that could happen to Cody.

“Then we’d better be prepared to do what we have to to ensure that he stays ours,” Geoff said.

Russ resignedly contemplated the old glass-fronted vending machine in the hallway between the coroner’s office and the mortuary, where he was reluctantly spending his Saturday afternoon. EAT-A-TERIA it proclaimed in vintage fifties lettering. HOT—COLD—TASTY—CONVENIENT! For a buck in change, you could get one of several sandwiches alleged to be turkey, ham, or cheese, and for fifty cents more you could make your meal complete with chicken soup, which poured out of a spout to the right of the sandwiches.

Everything tasted as if it had been made sometime last summer and had been left in the machine since then. The idea of a limp mystery-meat sandwich and soup with more salt than chicken in it was pretty damned unappealing, but it was closing in on one o’clock, and if he didn’t get some food in him he was going to collapse. He was thinking longingly of lunch at his mom’s place when Dr. Dvorak came through the heavy wooden doors of the mortuary.

“Don’t tell me you’re actually going to consume some of that swill,” the M.E. said.

Russ snorted. “It’s your machine.”

Dvorak shrugged off his lab coat and slung it over his arm. “It’s the county’s machine, my friend, probably put there to ensure a steady supply of customers to the hospital.” He headed up the short hallway to his office. Russ fell into step alongside him. “I tell you, Chief, in seven years I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen anyone refill that thing.” Dvorak opened his door, solid wood and frosted glass, just like the one to Russ’s office. “You didn’t need to come here, you know. Right now all I have is my preliminary report. We’ll have to wait on the state lab for toxicology.”

Dvorak sat down at a desk considerably neater than Russ’s. The preliminary report, already color-coded, went on top of a thin stack of similar files, squared to the edge of the desk. A large desktop calendar was filled with precisely lettered notes and reminders, its edges held down with a pencil cup of identically sharpened pencils and a marble-based pen set from the New York State Association of Medical Examiners. The leather cup matched the framed photo of Dvorak, the heavyset, bearded man who was his partner, and their two border collies.

The coroner, who also worked as a pathologist at the county hospital, was a compact man in his fifties, with close-cropped, grizzled hair and pale blue eyes that peered at Russ over the top of his trifocals.

“Of course I needed to stay,” Russ said. “A Jane Doe that’s a possible murder? You’re lucky I didn’t sit in on the autopsy.”

Dvorak looked askance. “Mmmm. As I recall, the last time you did that you—”

“Don’t remind me. What do you know?”

“The basics. From her teeth, she’s somewhere between sixteen and twenty-four. She was hit with a heavy, blunt object at the base of her skull, crushing in part of her medulla and causing swelling and hemorrhaging in her brain. It would have rendered her unconscious, and could have led to her death eventually.”

“Eventually?”

“My guess is she died of exposure. Based on her lividity, she hadn’t been dead more than four hours before you found her. But the body temperature taken by the paramedics was very low, the sort of thing you see a day or so after death. There’s no sign of frostbite, which means she was dead before any damage to the skin could occur.”

Russ nodded. “Her killer whacked her and then dumped her. And she froze to death.”

“In the vernacular, yes.”

Russ remembered Clare’s voice, shaky with horror, asking what it would be like, watching the car drive away, leaving you alone in the cold and the dark. “Did she ever regain consciousness?”

“No.”

He wondered if Clare would think this a mercy from her God. He rubbed his eyes underneath his glasses. “Anything else?”

“No other injuries. No distinguishing marks. The lab work from the state should be back by Monday afternoon, Tuesday at the latest. Then I can let you know if there were any alcohol or drugs involved.” The pathologist opened the folder he had carried from the mortuary and slid a paper across the desktop to Russ. “Here are her prints.” A set of X-rays. “Her dental profile.” A few Polaroids followed. “Pictures for identification purposes. I hope for her family’s sake you find out who she was quickly.” Russ turned the photos over in his hands, trying to lay the color and expression of life over the pale, fixed mask of death. “She had a baby recently, poor thing.”

“What?” Russ jerked his attention back to the doctor. “God damn. I was right. You sure?”

Dvorak gave him a quelling look. “Am I sure? Of course I’m sure. She’s about a week, ten days post-partum. Why?”

“Because six days ago we found an abandoned infant we’ve been trying to place ever since. And when Jane Doe turned up, I had this feeling . . . You got her blood type?”

The doctor looked at his sheet. “AB negative.”

“Hot damn. The baby is AB positive. That means she could be its mother, right?”

“Sure. It simply means the father would have to have a positive blood type.” Dr. Dvorak steepled his fingers together. “I take it this wasn’t a hospital birth?”

“Not that we can track down, no.”

“Well, then, if this girl gave birth to a baby with a different rhesus factor, and she didn’t receive an antigen shot afterwards, she’ll have Rh antibodies swimming in her blood. I can test for that.”

“Do it.” Russ stood, anxious to get to the station and put her prints into the database. “Would you give me a call when you have the results?”

The pathologist stood as well. “Of course.” They shook hands.

Russ glanced back at the report. “Damn. We really don’t have a whole hell of a lot here, do we?”

Dvorak shrugged. “She could have been killed by almost anything: a baseball bat, a small log, a tire iron, the leg off a barstool . . .” he opened his hands apologetically. “And the injury could have been done by almost any healthy adult. Sorry I can’t make it any easier for you.”

“It would be nice if you could have told me it was ‘a left-handed man under five-feet-six who pumps iron, wielding a barbell,’ but I’ll work with whatever you give me.”

“You don’t want a pathologist, you want a game of Clue. It was Miss Scarlet, in the Conservatory, with the candlestick.”

Russ scooped up the photographs, the X-rays, and the print sheet and put them into the empty folder Dvorak proffered him. The two men walked down the short hallway to the waiting room.

“You think there’s a connection between this girl having a baby and being murdered?” Dvorak patted his pockets absentmindedly, searching for the keys to unlock the door to the public area of the morgue. “Seems hard to imagine in this day and age.”

“I know. What’s the big deal about an unmarried girl having a baby these days? Not like when we were young.” Russ shook his head as the pathologist ushered him through the empty waiting room to the entrance.

“There are a lot of people willing to kill to get rid of an unwanted baby,” Dvorak said, smiling sourly. “It’s called abortion, and it’s perfectly legal.”

Russ did not want to go down that road. “What I need to know is who would be willing to kill to get rid of an unwanted mother.” Bright sunshine spilled over the buffed wooden floorboards when he opened the door. “Warmed up. Must be over forty.”

“Nice,” the pathologist agreed. “As long as you don’t count on it lasting.”

CHAPTER 6

Dvorak was right, Russ thought. As soon as the sun dropped behind the mountains, the mercury plummeted. Turning onto Church Street, he could see the time and temperature sign outside of Farmer’s and Merchant’s Savings and Loan. Twenty-one degrees, and with the air so clear it was bound to keep on dropping overnight. At least they were done with snow for awhile. Hell of a lot of snow for the beginning of December. Lousy for driving, but good for all the bed-and-breakfasts catering to skiers.

At a red light, his gaze dropped to the folder on the seat beside him. He’d spent the rest of his Saturday afternoon showing the X-rays to all three dentists in town, with no results. He didn’t want to consider the possibility that she might have been a tourist. Somebody who had come up to Millers Kill for antiquing or leaf-peeping or skiing and decided it would be the ideal place to drop her baby. If she was an out-of-towner, he might never be able to get an I.D. on her.

He drove past St. Alban’s, onto Elm, and pulled into Clare’s driveway. The connection to the church. That was the key, his best lead so far. Either the dead girl or the man who had impregnated her had some tie to St. Alban’s, and he needed the priest’s help to find out what it was. He killed the engine and sat for a moment, looking at the glow of lights through the windows, the intermittent puffs of smoke from the stone chimney. Admitted to himself that he wanted to check up on Clare, too. Not that she’d appreciate the idea. Russ got out of the car and crunched his way across her snow-covered lawn. The Dutch-Colonial house had a deep-hipped roof and a wide porch supported by four plain columns. He swept his boot back and forth as he climbed the stone steps up to the porch, clearing off a little of the snow. There must be another doorway out back by the ramshackle garage that she’d been using. Kind of a shame, because the double front door, with its small, stained-glass windows, was one fine piece of woodworking. He loved old houses.

He tried the wrought-iron door handles. They turned easily. After what she had seen, she still wasn’t locking her door. He sighed, rang the bell. From inside, he could hear a muffled lumping, then a faint “Coming!”

The left door opened wide, framing Clare in a swirl of smoke. She coughed. “Russ!” she said. “I didn’t expect you. Do you know anything about fires?” He followed her into a roomy foyer, wiping his boots on a worse-for-wear rag rug stretched out in front of the door. The air was acrid, making his eyes sting.

“Holy cow, Clare. What’re you doing, burning wet leaves?”

She reached for his coat. “I tried to get a fire going in the fireplace in the living room. But something went wrong.” He shrugged out of the bulky nylon parka and she hung it on an old coatrack.

On either side of the door were broad archways. From the size of the brass chandelier hanging in the room to his left, Russ guessed it was meant to be a dining room, although it looked more like a warehouse at the moment, with boxes and mismatched wooden chairs taking up most of the space. He bit back a smile. Evidently even the prospect of living out of cardboard hadn’t made the Reverend any more receptive to the idea of the church ladies swarming through her things, doing up the house for her.

Through the right arch, he could see the source of the problem. The Colonial-style brick fireplace in the center of the wall held a pile of overly large logs that were sputtering flames. Smoke curled under the mantel and filled the room. Since he didn’t hear anything, he guessed the quaint rectory had never been fitted out with anything as modern and useful as smoke alarms. “Let me see what I can do,” he said. “You open a few windows.”

The first thing he saw once he was on his knees on the flagstone hearth was that the flue was closed. He pulled its handle forward, opening it. The air rushed up the chimney with a sucking sound, drawing the smoke with it. There was an iron woodbox to the left of the fireplace and a wrought iron carrier holding kindling. “You got a newspaper handy?” he asked. She scooped yesterday’s Post-Star off a pine coffee table. He knocked the slightly singed logs to one side and replaced them with crumpled wads of paper, then laid on several small pieces of kindling and a quarter-split log. She had one of those silly brass canisters with foot-long match sticks on the mantelpiece.

“You’re supposed to use newspaper?” she asked, as the fire caught cleanly and began to burn. “I didn’t know that.”

“Where did you learn to make a fire?” Russ asked.

“Survival training,” she admitted. “You know, using pine needles, branches, a gum wrapper . . .”

“Do yourself a favor,” he said, grinning. “Use paper instead. And start small. Don’t pile on the big logs until you’ve got a roaring fire going.”

“I did have a roaring fire going!” she said. “For a minute or two.”

“What, when the pinecones caught on fire?” Russ laughed.

“The smoke’s cleared out,” she said with dignity. “I’ll close the windows.”

Russ took in the room while Clare cranked the casement windows shut. There was an overstuffed sofa and a few fat chairs with faded chintz covers grouped in front of the fireplace, and a needlepoint rug over the floorboards. The low built-in bookcases on either side of the fireplace were piled with haphazardly arranged books, pictures, and plants, and topped by two narrow clerestory windows.

“So what brings you here? Besides saving my bacon from getting smoked.”

“Wanted to talk about the case.”

“Ah,” she said. “Then why don’t I get us some coffee first? Make yourself at home.”

“Coffee would be great. This is quite a place you have here. Do you know when it was built?”

She disappeared through a swinging door in the back of the room, but her voice floated out to him. “Nineteen-twelve. It’s very Arts-and-Crafts, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah.” He walked back to the foyer and pulled off his wet boots. “Linda and I have an eighteenth-century farmhouse out near Fort Henry. No closets, eleven rooms and not a level wall or floor in any of them.”

“Must take a lot of work,” Clare shouted from the kitchen.

“Yeah, but I like it. Pretending I’m Bob Vila is a hobby of mine.”

She had set up a square chest on legs under the big front window and put it to work as the bar. Nice decanters. Russ uncorked one and took a sniff of Scotch. The smell was enough to make his mouth water. Sighing, he replaced the top. The little cane-seat chairs on either side didn’t look as if they could hold his weight, but he liked the plain, bare window, showing off the small panes of glass that ran along the edges. That was the one thing that drove him nuts about his wife’s custom curtain business—every window in his house was swagged and draped and ruffled with about fifty-seven yards of fabric.

Two standing lamps flanked a folded gateleg table behind the sofa. There was an assortment of family pictures, some in fancy silver frames, others in good-quality wood. He picked up the largest photo, taken on a beach somewhere. An older couple who must be Clare’s parents sitting on a driftwood log. A younger Clare in shorts and cotton sweater, her arm around a similarly dressed blond girl of eye-catching good looks. Two blond guys flanking them, not much taller than the girls but broad-shouldered and big. Which would explain the two separate photos of men in UVA football uniforms.

A smaller picture in an elaborate frame caught his eye. Mom and Dad dressed like one of those rich couples in a Cadillac ad, and Clare, who was decked out in a heavily embroidered robe, smiling and teary-eyed. Inside a church somewhere, from the looks of it. The two beefy brothers were accompanied by two cheerleader types, one of whom held a baby.

“Here you go,” Clare announced, backing through the door at the rear of the room. She lowered a tray containing two plain crockery mugs and a sugar bowl onto the coffee table. The smell was incredible.

“Damn, that is one good-smelling coffee. ’Scuse my French.”

She sat in one of the plump chairs and picked up a mug. “Why thank you. I grind my own mix. Jamaican Blue roast, Colombian . . . I put in a little ground hazelnut and cinnamon . . .” She smiled, the smile of a really good cook attempting without success to look modest. “The secret is to use fresh-roasted beans and fresh spices, and to grind ’em yourself. Don’t bother with the stuff in the supermarket that’s been sitting around in a bag for who knows how long.”

Russ took the other chair. “I’ll keep that in mind. Next time I have a spare half hour to make a cup of coffee.”

She laughed. “I didn’t know how you take it, so . . .” she said, waving a hand over the sugar bowl, packets of artificial sweetener, and creamer.

“I should probably be a macho guy and say I drink it black, but the truth is, I like it real sweet.”

“Oh, yeah. I drink mine sweet, too, but I’m always a little embarrassed by it. I used to stash sugar in my pockets and slip it in on the sly at briefings. Hey. Do you think how people drink their coffee reveals their personality?”

Russ stirred sugar into his mug and took a sip. He closed his eyes. “This is good. I needed this.” He opened his eyes and looked at Clare. “No. How you drink your coffee while you’re eating donuts, that reveals your personality.” She was wearing a woolly turtleneck tucked into a pair of khakis and what looked like some New York designer’s idea of army boots. She was curvier than he had thought when he had seen her in baggy sweats and thick outdoors clothes. “You run today?” he asked.

She nodded. “Six miles. I needed it, too, after last night.”

“Yeah. I’ve seen my share of dead bodies, and I’ve never gotten used to it. To tell you the truth, I hope I never do. Seeing someone who’s been murdered . . . that should make you lose sleep at night.”

Clare sat up a little straighter. “She was definitely murdered? It wasn’t a suicide?”

“Oh, no, it was murder, all right.” He told her Dr. Dvorak’s findings. When he got to the part about giving birth recently, her eyes went wide.

“Cody’s mother,” she said. “Good Lord. I have to admit, when you said it was too much of a coincidence last night, I chalked it down to, um . . . paranoia.”

“Thanks a lot. If I were a woman, you’d have called it intuition.” She made a face at him. He continued, “Dvorak is going to send DNA samples to Albany, along with some of Cody’s, to make sure. Of course, that will take up to four months.”

“That poor girl. I can’t imagine . . .” Clare looked into the fire. “I wish she could have known Cody was settled with the couple she had picked out for him. Before she died. Was killed.”

He got up and laid another two logs on the fire. “Don’t be wishing that so quick. As far as I’m concerned, Geoff Burns is my number one suspect. With Karen Burns following close behind.”

“You must be joking! The Burnses? You’re just saying that because you don’t like Geoff.”

“I admit that. I don’t like Geoff Burns. He’s an arrogant, self-important, humorless pain in the butt.” He sat down on the edge of his chair, leaning across the table. “But think about it, Clare. Who else has a better motive? The father of the baby? He’s gonna kill to avoid a few bucks child support a month? Or the Burnses, who have been trying for years to get a child, and are running out of resources and time and have no friends at DSS?”

She crossed her feet under her, tailor style. “You know nothing about this girl. What if Cody’s father was a married man, with a family, and she was going to blackmail him? Or what if her boyfriend killed her because Cody wasn’t his? Or . . . or . . .”

“Or what if she was a hit-woman for the Mafia and they rubbed her out before she could testify to the Feds?”

“Don’t be smart. You see what I’m saying, here. You can’t pin a murder on the Burnses without doing a lot more leg-work. Just because they’re convenient.”

“Legwork?”

“Well . . . that’s what they say on TV.”

“I’m not going to cut the investigation short, no. In fact, I want you to help us with something.”

She shifted forward in her chair. “Yeah?”

“The one thing we do know about the girl is that she knew the Burnses were looking for a baby, and that she left Cody at the church.”

“Or she agreed to let someone leave him at the church.”

“Right. Somewhere, there’s a connection. She was either a member of your congregation, or she worked there, or the father of the baby did, or she had friends there.”

“You think someone in my parish will be able to identify her?”

“Yeah.” He leaned back into his chair. “How would you feel about arranging for people to take a look at some photos tomorrow?”

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and bit her lip. In the warm light, her hair was the color of honey and molasses. Russ looked into his coffee.

“What do you mean by ‘arranging’ for people to look at the photographs? Flash them in front of every member of the congregation as they leave the church?”

“Well . . . yeah.”

“I can’t do that, Russ. Even if I were inclined to try to order them to do something, I’m their priest, not their commanding officer. Besides, you ever hear of a little thing called ‘separation of church and state’?”

“Oh, c’mon, Clare, I’m not asking you to march ’em all past a lineup at gunpoint. There are how many members of St. Alban’s?”

“Around two hundred families. We’ll get maybe a hundred folks at the ten o’clock service, and thirty or so at seven-thirty.”

“I’ve got an eight-man force that has to cover three towns as well as investigate this murder. Can you imagine what going door-to-door with every member of St. Alban’s will cost us in lost hours? I can’t spare the time this case will take me as it is. You know domestics, drunk driving, and shoplifting all increase around Christmas. Gimme a break. Help me out.” She crossed her arms and worried her lower lip. He pressed his point. “Neither of us wants to see something preventable happen because my officers were canvassing your congregation.”

She rolled her eyes. “Spare me. Next you’ll be trotting out a poor orphan boy and his sick dog. Just because I wear a collar doesn’t mean I’m a soft touch.”

“Okay, okay, scratch the last. Please. I’ll go by your rules, Clare, whatever you say. I need your help.”

She crossed her ankle over her knee, like a guy, and rested her mug on her leg. “This is what I can do. I’ll explain that your Jane Doe may have had some connection to the church. I’ll offer anyone who’s willing to help the chance to look at the photographs.” She looked into the fire. “I’ll remind them that somewhere she’s got parents, or brothers and sisters, who don’t know where she is or what’s happened to her.” She paused for a moment, then looked back at him. “You can take down the names of anyone who views the pictures, and I’ll have Lois give you a copy of our membership directory.” She smiled a one-sided smile. “The rest, I’m afraid, will have to be legwork.”

“You really like that word, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Okay. Thank you. I know this is a lot to throw on you, this being your, what, third week? Thank you. For everything.”

“Oh, lord. My sermon was going to be on Cody, and then the announcement about the Burnses’ attempt to have him fostered with them. Do I have to tell everyone we think this girl is his mother? Not that I want to sweep it under the rug, far from it, but it will make things sound awfully odd. ‘Here’s the baby, here are the adoptive parents, and, oh, by the way, will you all look at pictures of the dead mother?’ ”

“No. As a matter of fact, I’d rather play that piece of information close to my vest. Let’s just say I have reason to believe the dead girl had some connection to St. Alban’s and leave it at that.”

Clare leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “I’m still going ahead with my announcement after the sermon, asking the congregation to write letters in support of the Burnses. I cannot believe they had anything to do with that girl’s death.” She shook her head. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I hope you can find out her name soon. It sounds so callous to keep calling her ‘that girl.’ ”

He nodded. “I know. I want you to ask yourself if you can’t believe the Burnses might have done it because they really haven’t ever given you any cause to think they might be capable of such a thing, or if you can’t believe it because you’ve met them, they belong to your church, and they’re ‘nice people.’ ”

She frowned, bit her lower lip again. “They’re very intense, very focused on getting Cody. But anyone who’s been trying to have a baby for so long would be that way, I think. And they strike me more as the types who would throw money or the force of law at a problem and expect it to go away.” She looked at Russ. “I met with them just this morning, did I mention that?”

“Last night you told me you had an appointment with them. How did it go?”

“Fine. Karen was all bubbly and hopeful, and Geoff was . . . his usual self. They certainly didn’t behave like a couple who committed murder the night before.”

“Have you ever seen anyone after they committed murder?”

“Um.” She looked into the fireplace.

“Um?”

“I’ve seen people after they’ve killed. How’s that?”

Russ retreated from the sharpness in her voice. “I didn’t mean to be flip. What I’m saying is that you can’t always tell by someone’s behavior afterwards.”

She waved a hand. “No, no, I’m sorry. Sensitive area. You’re right.” She looked into his eyes. “I do recognize that part of me doesn’t want anyone from my parish to be involved. That I can’t believe that one of my . . .”

“Nice, white-collar Episcopalians?”

She smiled ruefully. “One of my nice Episcopalians could do something so brutal. Now, if someone had been murdered with poisoned sherry . . .”

“Or clubbed to death with a nine-iron . . .”

“Or strangled with a shetland sweater from Talbots . . .” They both laughed. Clare smiled at him. “I’m really glad you came over.” She pushed her hair back with one hand. “Finding her has been weighing on my mind all day, but there was no one I could talk with about it.”

Russ removed his glasses and rubbed them on his shirt. “Yeah. You need to talk to someone who’s been there. That’s why cops tend to go off-duty straight to the nearest bar instead of going home. It’s not any different than coming off patrol someplace, you and your buddies getting together to drink too much and tell lousy jokes and talk about what happened over and over again.”

“Because nobody else will understand.”

“Yeah.” They looked at each other in agreement, then she turned to the fire. He rolled the mug between his palms, watching the play of firelight over the many textures in the room. They sat for awhile, the fire hissing and popping occasionally, comfortable with not talking. Russ finished off his coffee and smiled to himself. It was so many years since he had made a new friend, he’d forgotten how enjoyable it could be, getting to know someone whose mind was both fresh and familiar.

“What?” Clare asked.

He hadn’t realized he had been smiling at her. “Oh, just that you remind me of myself. Cops and priests have a lot in common, don’t you think? Confessions, sin, helping folks no one else wants to help . . .”

“Funny uniforms, working odd hours, lousy pay . . .”

He grinned. “Laughing at things no one else could laugh at . . .”

“Heck,” she said, “it’s just like the army, except without free medical coverage.”

Russ groaned and pulled himself out of his chair. “Speaking of odd hours, I’d better head home before Linda decides I’m out on a call and puts my dinner back in the freezer.” He glanced at the fire, burning bright and clean. “Make sure you bank that fire before you go to bed. You don’t want to have the volunteer fire department out here in the middle of the night.”

“I promise.” Clare got up and headed for the foyer. “So, I’ll see you tomorrow at church?”

He snorted. “Maybe not for the whole service. That might blow a gasket on this old unbeliever.” She handed him his parka. “What’s the best way to make sure everyone has the chance to look at the photos?”

“Hmmm. If you station an officer near the main door of the church, and you take the parish hall, we should be able to ensure anyone who wants to help out will be able to get ahold of a picture.” She looked up at him while he shrugged on his coat. “Can we try to keep this as low-key as possible? There will be little kids there, you realize.”

Russ paused from tugging on his heavy boots. “I realize that. I’ll take care to be as unobtrusive as possible. I promise.”

“Just promise me you’ll look into every possibility, and not just focus on the Burnses.” She touched his arm briefly. “As far as we know, the last thing she wanted in life was for her baby to be settled with them. I’d really like to see that happen.”

“I promise I’ll conduct a thorough investigation. Don’t worry, my own theory won’t stop me from chasing down any other leads. It’s not so much that I want to nail Geoff Burns, Clare, it’s that I want to catch whoever did this. Do you realize that if I’d started Friday night’s patrol at the kill instead of ending up there, that girl would be alive today?” He kept his eyes on his gloves as he pulled them over his hands.

She rested her hand on his arm again, saying nothing, looking at him with those clear, bright eyes. They were more brown than green tonight. He shook his head sharply.

“Oh, shit, I know I can’t stop bad things from happening. But I don’t have to like it. Excuse my French. This is my town. My home, where I grew up. They could have hired anybody to do my job, but they gave it to me, and sometimes I get the feeling, Clare, I tell you, like when I first held my sister’s newborn, like I had been given something amazing and valuable, and it was up to me to guard her and protect her.” He let out his breath explosively. “Am I making any sense at all?”

Clare nodded. “Yes.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . I’m not the sort to usually get melodramatic.”

She shook her head. “Telling the truth isn’t melodramatic. And I certainly don’t think taking your responsibilities seriously is melodramatic.” She smiled up at him, a small, thoughtful smile. “Sounds to me like you have a vocation, Russ. You’re called to your profession.”

“Huh.” He thrust his hands in his pockets. “If that’s a calling, it’s a damned uncomfortable feeling.”

“It can be, at times. Other times, it carries you on like nothing else in the world, because you’re doing what you know you’re meant to do.”

He grinned at her. “Are you going to bring God into it, now?”

She crossed her arms. “No, you’ll have to wait for tomorrow for that. And don’t forget something for the collection plate.”

He laughed. “I’ll be there.” He held his hand out, and she shook it in her firm, no-nonsense way. “See you in church, Reverend.”

“Police work in the parish hall. It should make for an interesting Sunday.”

CHAPTER 7

Waiting her turn to recess down the center aisle behind the choir, Clare inspected the crowd, taking the emotional temperature of her flock. The Right Reverend Malcom Steptoe, one of her teachers, had pounded in the importance of seeing the congregation as a whole. “You’ll meet with individuals and small groups all the time,” he would say. “Once a week, you have a chance to see the whole family of communicants together. Are they peaceable? Satisfied? Discontent? Angry? You must know!”

Right now, at the end of the Eucharist, several of her family looked entirely disapproving. It wasn’t from her homily on Cody, she knew. That had been a tight piece of writing, comparing the baby to the infant Jesus, and his waiting for a family to the Christian waiting for the advent of Christ on Earth. It segued nicely into her plea for help for the Burnses. And it was under fifteen minutes long, always a plus for a sermon.

The last of the choir crossed the chancel. Nathan Andernach, the deacon, lined up shoulder to shoulder with Sabrina Campbell, today’s reader, and Clare took her place at the end of the line. “The king shall come when morning dawns,” the choir and congregation thundered, “and earth’s dark night is past.” The three trod slowly down the steps, past the altar rail, into the aisle. “O haste the rising of that morn, the day that aye shall last.” From her unquestioned place in the front pew, Mrs. Marshall gave Clare a look that said, “This is not the way we do, things, young lady.”

No, this was definitely about the two police officers in the back of the church. During announcements, in between calls for donations to the soup kitchen and volunteers for the Christmas Eve greening of the church, she had outlined the situation as briefly as possible and asked for everyone’s cooperation with Chief Van Alstyne, who had risen from his seat in the last pew and nodded soberly to the crowd. There had been a buzz of conversation, cut short by the offertory and the celebration of the Eucharist. “And let the endless bliss begin, by weary saints foretold,” the congregation sang. Sterling Sumner tugged the end of his scarf around his throat and glared at her as she marched past his pew. “When right shall triumph over wrong, and truth shall be extolled.” Vaughn Fowler was scanning the congregation, frowning slightly. Probably picking out who was going to be most disturbed by looking at pictures of a dead body.

The choir fanned out in two lines against the back of the church. “The king shall come when morning dawns, and light and beauty brings.” Their harmony soared above the congregation’s melody. Russ Van Alstyne was singing along, his finger tracing across the hymnal, following the words. Now that was a surprise. Nice baritone too, from what she could hear with the choir reverberating only a few feet away. “Hail, Christ the Lord! Thy people pray, come quickly, King of kings.”

Clare held the heavily embroidered floor-length cope—a literal mantle of priestly authority—out with one arm so she could turn without tangling. She drew a deep breath, letting the words come from a place deep inside herself. “Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord,” she said, projecting her voice so that it echoed back enthusiastically from the stone walls. “Alleluia, alleluia!”

“Thanks be to God,” the congregation responded, “Alleluia, alleluia!” It was an immensely satisfying moment, even if all hell was about to break loose. A polite, Episcopalian sort of hell, of course. She grinned.

The choir members headed back up the aisles in groups of two or three. Parishioners were rising from their seats, drifting toward the parish hall, putting on coats, collecting squirming children. The din of voices made it hard to hear, so she nearly jumped when Russ spoke quietly in her ear.

“Nice sermon. In fact, the whole thing was pretty cool. Very ritualistic.”

“Isn’t it? Come for one of the big feast days. You’ll get to see me cense the altar.”

“Uh huh. Sounds interesting.”

“Colorful natives practicing their quaint rituals in their natural habitat.”

“Speaking of colorful natives, where should I . . . ?”

“I have to stay here and greet everyone leaving now. You head back to the parish hall, right through those doors there,” she pointed to the front of the church, “down the hall to the right.” The officer Russ had brought with him slipped through the inner doorway into the vestibule. He carried a plain manila folder. “Do me a favor,” she said to Russ, “give people a chance to grab a cup of coffee and have a cookie before you start flashing the photos, okay?”

“Okay.” He tapped his own folder and pushed his way through the crowded center aisle, apparently not noticing the round-eyed glances directed at him. It must be hard, being a cop, she thought. Always either a hero or a bad guy to the public, never just another human being.

“Reverend Fergusson!” Mr. Sumner’s preemptory tone jerked her away from her thoughts. “Don’t you think asking the congregation to view pictures of murdered women in the sanctity of their own church is the height of poor taste?”

Clare’s spine stiffened. It was going to be a long Sunday.

“No, I don’t think we’ll be called upon to help the investigation again, Mr. Fitzpatrick. That would mean the Millers Kill police couldn’t find the killer, and I’m sure that won’t happen.”

“Wouldn’t count on that. When I was an alderman, I told ’em we needed another trained investigator. Too many people coming up from the cities these days! It’s getting so you can’t walk down Main Street without tripping over some newcomer from New York or Albany.” The octogenarian wheezed indignantly. Clare laid a steadying hand on his arm, and he responded by seizing her hand and pumping it in time to his words. “Told ’em we’d be needing more investigators, but they wanted to save money, so what do they do? Hire a detective as chief and send one of the boys off to the state troopers for the summer. I blame Harold Collins, that cheapskate. You haven’t met Harold Collins, yet, have you? You know how he voted when we had that water treatment problem?”

“I really have to get back to the parish hall, Mr. Fitzpatrick. It’s been great talking with you, and I hope that bursitis calms down soon. How about I plan on making a visit later this week? I’ll give you a call Monday. Take care!” Clare deftly pried her hand from the former alderman’s clutches and trotted down the aisle as fast as her dignity and her flapping alb would allow. She made it to the sacristy without having to speak to anyone else. She unknotted the cincture around her waist, a rope-like belt symbolizing her vows, and removed her stole, kissing the embroidered cross at its center with a hasty reverence. During the four years she had served the church as a deacon, she had worn the rectangular scarf across her chest, and it still thrilled her to feel it in the ordained priest’s position, hanging squarely around her neck, falling over both shoulders. She yanked the alb over her head in a billow of white linen, shook it with a snap she hoped would take out most of the wrinkles, and hung it. On a wire hanger. Her conscience pricked her. It didn’t make much of a symbol of purity with one sleeve inside out, ready to slip to the floor at any moment. She pulled it off and rehung it on its own wooden hanger.

In one of her less-mottled mirrors, she was amazed to see herself so collected. Not a hair was out of place in her French twist. After listening to complaints and denials and gasps of horror and agreeing over and over and over again that yes, it was a terrible shame, and no, the police didn’t suspect anyone in their congregation, and what was the world coming to, she felt her hair should be standing away from her scalp in a frizzled heap, the ends smoking.

There was a knock on the door. Clare sighed. Not another round of questions, please. The door cracked open, admitting a hand holding a very full, very enticing sherry glass.

Lois sidled into the room. “I asked the refreshment ladies to bring up the sherry from the kitchen. I thought you might need it.”

Clare held the glass to her nose and sniffed deeply. “Ahhhh . . .” She took a larger-than-recommended swallow. “God bless you, Lois.”

“Is that official?”

“You bet. How’s it going in there?”

“I heard a few comments about priests overstepping the bounds, but so far no one’s used the phrase ‘meddling woman.’ ”

“Oh. Great.”

“Chief Van Alstyne is being quite charming. He hasn’t started waving eight-by-ten glossies of murder victims around, so people are feeling a tad more relaxed.”

“Encouraged by the sherry?”

“I brought up the second bottle myself. I thought the chief might like some as well, but he turned me down. No drinking on duty, I suppose.” Clare finished off her glass and sighed again, this time with contentment. The secretary went on. “He’s really quite attractive, don’t you think?”

“Who?”

“Chief Van Alstyne. All that tousled hair and those sexy lines at the corners of his eyes. He has that rugged, all-American look, like the kind Ralph Lauren puts in his ads, except his models always have this slightly gay edge to them. The chief is very . . . heterosexual.”

Clare laughed. “The chief is also very married, Lois. Just how much of the sherry have you had?”

“Don’t worry,” Lois said, floating back into the hall. Clare followed her. “I’m sure there’s enough left to rustle up another glass for you.”

In the large, sunlit parish hall, things did seem almost normal. Clare worked her way back to the white-draped refreshment table, greeting the people she knew by name and smiling at those she didn’t know yet. Mae Bristol, as plump and pale as an over-risen bun, was serving up coffee and tea from the church’s silver service. She always wore a printed silk dress with a matching hat—this Sunday it was cabbages in shades of blue. The sherry bottles were between the creamer and the coffee cups. They looked seriously depleted.

“This is stupid, Miss Bristol. My parents let me drink wine at home!” A slim girl in a fashionably skinny velvet-and-patchwork dress leaned across the white tablecloth. Her hair was perfectly retro-seventies, straight and shining and parted in the middle. She reminded Clare of the girls at her old high school whose outfits always looked like they were straight off the pages of Seventeen magazine and whose hair was always blown dry to frothy perfection. She could still remember feeling angular and underdeveloped and unfeminine next to them, a jock whose clothes never looked right off the basketball court or the track, a girl whose fingernails were always lined with grease because she’d been helping her dad with airplane maintenance. It had been—what?—seventeen or eighteen years since she graduated? Funny how the individuals changed, but the type remained. There would always be girls who had been blessed by the gods of adolescence, and girls like Clare. She reached around the latest version of the homecoming queen and snagged one of the sherry bottles. Age, thank heavens, most definitely hath its privileges. The girl flashed her a well-polished look of teenage disdain.

“Then your mother can come over here and get a glass for you, Alyson. I’m not giving you any sherry until then, and that’s final.” The girl flipped her dazzling hair in annoyance and flounced away as well as she could in her high-heeled platform boots.

“The difficult age,” Clare said, filling her glass to the top and handing the bottle back to Miss Bristol.

The elderly lady fixed Clare with her black-currant eyes. “That girl is spoiled rotten,” she said. “I had her in my fourth-grade class, and she was spoiled then. Alyson will always be at the difficult age, whether she’s seventeen or seventy.”

“Ah,” Clare said. “Well.”

“Oh, don’t mind me, Reverend. I never felt I could speak my mind when I was teaching, so now that I’m retired, I’m making up for lost time. Which reminds me. Some of those men who believe they run the church undoubtedly want to let you know their opinions about this police business. You stand your ground. I think you’re doing a splendid job.”

“Goodness,” Clare said. “Thank you, Miss Bristol.” She turned away, feeling as if she’d been given a sticker for good behavior from an otherwise strict teacher. She took a sip of her sherry, spotting Russ standing by the door to the street. Casual, not obviously blocking it, but making it impossible to get past him without at least making an excuse. He really was tall, several inches above anyone else in the room. It was more noticeable in a group. She wended her way toward him through the crowd, careful not to spill any of her drink on the faded rose-patterned carpet. As she nodded and smiled at her congregants, Vaughn Fowler fell in beside her.

“Any luck with identifying the victim?” he asked.

“At the church door? No,—no.” She had to forcibly restrain herself from adding “sir” every time she spoke to Colonel Fowler. Mr. Fowler.

“Let’s hope someone here will be able to help the police, then. Speaking as a vestry member, I don’t like it. The sooner we get this off church property the better. You do realize there could be a question of liability for St. Alban’s?”

“Liability? For a murder? I don’t see how.”

“If there was some connection. Do the police have a suspect yet? If it’s a member of our congregation, we may need to consult the diocesan attorney to ensure that the church, as a corporate entity, has no responsibility.”

“Ah . . . as far as I know, Chief Van Alstyne hasn’t singled out any one person as a suspect. After all, finding out who she was is a very preliminary step.”

“I’m thinking about the next step. Suppose he arrests someone from St. Alban’s. It’s in the Post-Star. It’s on the news. Then the real murderer turns up. That leaves us wide open to a lawsuit. Contributing to defamation of character or some such. Lawyers. You have to think of the ramifications of everything you do these days.”

Millers Kill’s chief of police was smiling reassuringly to a young couple wrestling their two little girls into snowsuits. “Mama,” the older child said, “is that Officer Friendly?”

“I was wondering when you’d get over here. I wanted to wait for you before I started showing the pictures around.” Russ reached behind him and swept the folder off an unused prie-dieu standing beside the door. He looked keenly at Mr. Fowler. Clare introduced the two men.

“I recall reading about you in the Post-Star around the time you were appointed police chief, Van Alstyne. You were in the Eighty-ninth MP brigade weren’t you? I was chief of staff at Fort Hood during their deployment there in ’eighty-seven.”

The chief blinked and straightened slightly. “Yes, sir, I was in the Eighty-ninth.” Clare bit back a smile. Evidently she wasn’t the only one to have a hard time treating the colonel as a civilian. “I’m surprised you’d remember something like that,” Russ went on.

“Military service is something I always look for. It’s what makes a man.” He frowned. “Or woman.” Clare felt her cheeks flush. Fowler pointed to the folder. “You ready to start this, Chief?”

“Yessir,” Russ said.

“Then I might as well be the first. Set an example, let everyone know what’s expected of them. Nothing to be afraid of, after all.” Russ looked at Clare. She nodded. He flipped open the folder. Clare had avoided looking at the photographs when she had been saying good-bye to parishioners at the front door, but now she took a long, steady look at the face of the unknown. Four shots, face front, profiles, and full body, covered with an institutional green sheet. She was struck by how much less real the girl looked, laid out on a steel table, lit by fluorescents and flashbulbs. Not at all like the sleeping princess, leaves frozen into her long hair, that she had stood over on the bank of the creek.

“Sorry,” Fowler said. “Don’t know her.” He frowned. “Where did you say it happened?”

“I didn’t,” Russ said. “We found her body just upstream from Payson’s Park.”

The colonel glanced at Russ. “Kids still go there to get away from their parents?” He shook his head. “I used to skinny dip in the river there. Jump off the old trestle bridge and swim downstream. It was a more innocent time. . . . Sorry I can’t be of any help.”

“Thank you anyway,” Russ said.

Fowler nodded, slipping on his overcoat. “Reverend, I’ll be seeing you at the next vestry meeting. Chief Van Alstyne, good to meet you.” When he opened the door, the sunlight and snowlight flooded the parish hall, drawing glances from the rest of the room.

Clare held up her hands. “May I have your attention, please? For those of you willing to help with the police investigation, Chief Van Alstyne is ready to have you look at the photographs. If you could give him your name before leaving, he’ll be able to keep track of which members of our congregation have seen the pictures. I know it’s an unpleasant task, but it’s important that we all do our part to help the police catch whoever is responsible for this crime. Thank you.”

There was a surge of bodies toward them. “Good heavens.” Clare murmured. “They don’t seem to be too horrified at the prospect of autopsy shots, do they?”

“Reality TV,” Russ whispered. “If you’ve seen all those specials on serial killers, this is pretty tame.” He raised his voice. “If you could form a line there, we can get you all out of here quickly.”

It was a repeat of the earlier scene in the vestibule of the church, with more people. The same exclamations, expressions of sympathy, philosophical mutterings. No one recognized her. There was a moment of excitement when Mae Bristol’s turn came up. She held two of the photos in her hands, looking slowly from one to the other. “I feel as if I should know her,” she said. “I just can’t place her. But I’m sure I’ve seen her before.” She shook her head and smiled apologetically at Russ and Clare. “Too many years of too many young people, I suppose.”

The tedium of the whole process reminded Clare of how she had felt waiting on the trail for the evidence to be photographed. Police work was a lot like combat, she decided, hours and days of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.

“Oh! My! God!” The squeal brought her mind back to the scene at hand. Alyson what’s-her-name stood in front of Russ, flanked by two well-dressed adults who were presumably the parents who had spoiled her. “I know her! That’s Katie McWhorter! I know her!”

CHAPTER 8

Clare had offered her office to the Shatthams, figuring it would be a comfortable spot for their daughter to talk with the police chief, but they were insistent that Clare be there for Alyson’s statement, so the five of them wound up clustered at one end of the massive oak table in the vestry meeting room. Clare wasn’t sure what role the Shatthams wanted her to play. Counsel? Witness? Maybe they hoped she would put the fear of God into Alyson, who, after her first emotional outburst, had reassumed her pose of pseudo-sophistication and contempt. Clare was out to sea when it came to adolescents, which she’d freely admit if anyone bothered to ask. The only teens she had known in recent years had been in the army, and she didn’t think telling Alyson to keep her weapon grounded and her hands inside the bird would be useful in this situation.

The girl sat in a chair facing away from one of the windows, her hair a blond nimbus, her face shadowed. Her parents had dithered for a few moments before taking up seats on either side of her. Russ sized up his choices and sat down directly opposite Alyson, leaving the chair at the head of the table for Clare. She took it, wishing she had brought her glass of sherry along, wondering how Russ could let the seconds roll on by without demanding Alyson tell them everything she knew.

He flipped open the folder again, arranged the photos against the creamy manila, and slid it across the table to Alyson. The teen’s eyes flickered to the pictures and then returned to the chief. Russ reached inside his shirt pocket, removed a pair of sunglasses, and swapped his glasses for the shades. They were mirrored. Clare rested a finger against her lips to keep from making a crack about Cool Hand Luke.

“Katie McWhorter,” he said. “What can you tell me about her, Alyson?”

“She was just a girl who went to school with me, that’s all. She graduated last year.”

“Did she stay in town after she graduated? Or did she move away?”

The girl shifted slightly in her seat. “She went off to college. Somewhere. I’m not sure. It’s not like we were friends or anything.”

“No?”

“No. She was like, living somewhere around Depot Street? My parents sure don’t want me going there. And she didn’t exactly hang out at Smoky Joe’s drinking cappuccino.”

“Who did she hang with, Alyson? Before she went to college.”

“Nobody much. She was a brainiac, really smart, so she knew a lot of the geeks. I know she had a job at the Infirmary.” She paused, frowning. “She had a boyfriend.”

Clare wanted to yell, “Yes! Now we’re getting somewhere!” Russ didn’t twitch. “A boyfriend?” he asked, with no particular emphasis.

“Yeah. Ethan Stoner. They were like, a weird combination, what with her being a brain and him being a head.” The unintentional pun made Alyson smile at her own wit. “I think they knew each other from way back, like in grade school or something. He was held back a year someplace, otherwise he would have graduated last year with Katie. They were a pretty hot and heavy item.”

“Had you seen her since she went away to school?”

“Had I seen her? What do you mean?” Clare wished there was more light on Alyson’s face. She couldn’t tell if her voice was strained because it was finally sinking in that an acquaintance, someone her own age, was dead, or if she knew more than she was letting on. Or if she was just hostile to Russ’s authority.

“Did you see her back in Millers Kill at any time?”

“No. But like I said, we weren’t friends. So if she came back to visit Ethan, I wouldn’t have known about it.”

“Or her parents.”

“Huh?”

“She might have come back to visit her parents.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Alyson looked at her own parents at this. “Can I go now? I really don’t know anything else.”

“Can you think of any reason, anything at all, why someone might have wanted Katie dead?”

“God, no. I think it must be one of those random violence things, don’t you? Some stranger coming into town and raping and murdering the first girl he can lure into his car?” She shuddered visibly and dramatically.

Her mother whimpered. “Chief Van Alstyne, do we need to be worried about the safety of our daughter?”

“My God, what if it’s one of those serial killers, like the one over in Rochester a few years back?” Mr. Shattham put his arm around his daughter’s thin shoulders.

“Dad-dy . . .” she said, her voice rising in a whine.

“I can’t rule out a stranger killing in this case,” Russ said, “but I doubt that’s what we have here. And Katie was never raped.” He folded his fingers together and leaned his chin on his hands. “She had recently had a baby, though.”

Alyson’s mouth dropped open. Dust motes rose through the air on thermals caused by the sunlight puddling on the floor and the table. “What?” she finally choked out. “She was pregnant?” It was the first genuine emotion Clare had seen from the girl since she laid eyes on the photos of Katie’s body.

“She had been pregnant. The doctor who autopsied her says she gave birth within the last two weeks.”

“Pregnant. Holy shit.”

“Alyson!”

“Oh, Mummy, don’t have a cow.” Alyson’s shaded face stilled, only a small frown marring the blankness of hard thought. “It must have been Ethan,” she said finally. “He knocked her up and then killed her. It must have been Ethan.”

“Why do you say that?” Russ leaned back in his chair.

“Like, who else would it be? He was seriously in love with her. Aren’t most women murdered by their husbands or boyfriends? I remember discussing that in my health class.”

Clare thought back to health class at Hopewell High School. The only thing dangerous she had discussed was venereal disease, which over 50 percent of the male population was afflicted with, according to her teacher.

“Maybe he wanted her to, like, have an abortion and she wouldn’t. Or maybe he wanted her to marry him and she wouldn’t. Whatever.”

“Whatever,” Clare said under her breath.

“Wow. Ethan and Katie. And I know both of them. That’s like, creepy.”

“Alyson,” Russ asked, “do you remember Katie’s parents’ address? Was it on Depot Street?”

“No. I don’t know her parents’ names. Oh, whoa, she has a big sister, though. She was a senior when I was a freshman. Kristen. She works at Fleet Bank as a teller.”

“The branch here in town?”

“Yeah. I know because that’s our bank.”

“Okay, Alyson.” Russ gathered up the photos and closed the folder. “Thank you for your cooperation. You’ve been a big help.”

“I can go? I’m done?”

“That’s right. I don’t need a formal statement from you, there’s no need to go to the station.” He pulled off his shades and stared into her eyes. “Remember that we’re just gathering information at this point. I appreciate your, ah, insight into Katie’s relationship with Ethan Stoner, but none of us can draw any conclusions from that.” The girl gaped, a blank expression on her beautiful face. Russ sighed. “Don’t go telling everyone you meet that Katie’s dead and Ethan murdered her. Got it?” He turned to Alyson’s parents. “Mr. and Mrs. Shattham, thank you.”

“You will let us know if you come to suspect this was the work of some . . . some . . .”

“Wandering serial killer? I certainly will, Mr. Shattham.”

Russ and the Shatthams looked at Clare. She rose from her seat, gesturing toward the door. “Let me walk you out,” she said to the Shatthams. They got up, taking coats off the other chairs, and preceded her into the hall. Somehow, she assumed Russ would remain behind, sitting in the sunlight, thinking. Probably the same way he was assuming she’d come back as soon as she had seen the Shatthams off, to talk things over with him.

This time, she did bring her glass, as well as the remaining bottle. “Want a slug?” she asked, brandishing the cream sherry in her fist.

“I don’t think you can have a slug of sherry,” Russ said. “No, thank you.”

Clare sat down in the seat she had vacated, thought for a moment, then moved to where Alyson had been sitting, turning that chair sideways to catch more of the sun. “Lord, it gets cold in this room,” she said, pouring herself a measure of sherry. “I must say, though, the sun makes it almost bearable.”

“You’ve got thin Southern blood, that’s your problem. Keep your thermostat set at sixty and always wear no more than two layers of clothing. That’ll toughen you up.”

“Ugh.” She took a sip of sherry. “My mamma would call this a little tot.” She drawled the expression. “Every drink to my mamma is either a little tot or a splash. A tot of wine. A splash of bourbon.” She took another small sip. “So. What do you think?”

“What do you think?” Russ countered.

“I think Alyson’s not being entirely honest. I can’t say why. It’s not as if I know her or her family. It was just . . . something off.”

“Mmmm. I agree. You notice that we still don’t know what Katie’s connection to St. Alban’s is. Alyson only mentioned knowing her from school. Maybe that’s what she’s hiding.”

“Why, though? I mean, if you consider Alyson as a suspect, which I find very difficult to do, what possible motive could she have?”

“Jealousy? Rivalry?”

“They moved in entirely different circles, it sounds like. I remember Ethan Stoner from that fight you broke up on Friday. I realize he wasn’t showing at his best, but I find it hard to believe that even cleaned up and sober, he’d appeal to Alyson.”

“Hmmm mmmm. Ethan Stoner. I hate to think he could do something as bad as this. He was awful edgy and upset that night, wasn’t he?” Abstracted by thought, his upstate accent thickened, so that “wasn’t he” came out “wun’t he?” “Maybe he had real reason to be so upset.”

“Are you going to go out and talk to him this afternoon?”

“No. If I’m going to move him onto the list of possibles, I want more information first. There’s a good piece of advice about interrogating suspects: never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. Not that you ever know all the answers. But if I haul Ethan in now, I’ll be working in the dark. No, I’m going to find Katie’s parents first, if I can, or her sister. Get a handle on who she was, what she was about.”

“What do you mean, find her parents if you can? There can’t be that many McWhorters on or around Depot Street.”

“You haven’t seen the area. It’s our own quaint, rural version of a rat-infested slum. Mostly six-or eight-or ten-unit apartment buildings, falling down around the tenant’s ears. Not that most of ’em would notice if a place came down. Half the residents of that area don’t have telephones. They have twenty-four-inch TVs and satellite reception, but no phones.”

“Being poor doesn’t make a person bad, Russ. Just as being rich doesn’t make a person good.”

“I don’t blame anyone for being poor. Hell, my mother was poor after my father passed on. I blame people who could change their condition but are too lazy or too attached to drugs or booze or who just plain don’t care that they live like pigs and suck off the public teat.”

Clare dropped her glass to the table and stared at him incredulously. “Maybe, if instead of being angry at them, you got angry at the forces that shaped their lives, you might find yourself an instrument of change, rather than just a complainer. Maybe if you tried seeing individuals instead of some amorphous ‘them,’ you’d see people with problems, not just people who are problems.”

“Of all the—’scuse me for being blunt, Clare, but that’s naive.”

“No, it’s not. Reaching out to people who may not even realize what sort of help they need is hard, thankless work. I’ve met men and women who’ve dedicated their lives to it, and they’re some of the toughest, least starry-eyed people I know.”

“I notice you’re not doing that inner city thing, though.”

She threw up her hands. “I think you’ve pretty well proved that Millers Kill has the full compliment of modern problems, even without an ‘inner city.’ Part of my work here is going to be to lead my congregation into service. To get them to open their eyes and see the need all around them.”

“And do what?”

Clare tucked a strand fallen from her French twist behind her ear. “To start, I want us to reach out to girls like Katie McWhorter, girls whose pregnancies would otherwise mean a lifetime sentence of dependancy and bad relationships. Help them to stay in school. Teach them how to find a job, be a better mother. Mentor them so they know there are other ways they have value besides producing babies. Support them in changing their lives.”

“You haven’t seen the ingrained pockets of country poverty yet, Clare. Folks who’ve never held a job, or lived in a house where some man wasn’t beating on a woman, or gotten through a day without pounding down enough booze to make ’em forget their hardscrabble life. I’ve been there, and I’ve seen it all and cleaned up after the messes, and I’m here to tell you, you’re gonna break your heart if you try to change people like that.”

She smiled at him. Maybe not such a hard case after all. “I don’t have a choice, Russ. We’re all called to see the Christ in all people. Even a down-and-dirty atheist like you must have heard of ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ ”

“Oh. Well, hell, if you’re gonna bring God into it . . .”

“You know, I like that about you.”

“What?”

“You’ve just seen me celebrate the Eucharist, I’m sitting here in my cassock and collar, and you still manage to forget that I’m a priest. You argue with me like I’m . . . just me. I like that.”

Russ shifted in his chair. “No big deal. I’m just too ignorant to know there’s a way I’m supposed to treat a priest, that’s all.”

Clare smiled into her sherry. Russ spun the manila folder around on the tabletop.

“Katie McWhorter.”

“Yes.” Clare dropped her glass on the table and rose from her chair. “We can check right now to see if there are any McWhorters listed in the phone book. C’mon into my office.”

Russ studied Clare’s eclectic decor while she paged through the Millers Kill directory. “No McWhorters listed for Depot Street. Or for South Street or Beale Avenue. No Kristen McWhorter, no K. McWhorter.” She flopped the book shut. “Now what?”

“Now, tomorrow morning I go to the bank and see if I can find the sister. The best way to a positive I.D. will be to have a family member identify her at the morgue. Failing that, I’ll head for the high school. They should still have Katie’s records.”

“Would you like me to come along to the bank? Or to the morgue? To be there when you break the news to Katie’s sister?”

“To what, comfort her in her hour of need? We don’t know if she’s religious or not, Clare. Maybe she wouldn’t want a priest hanging around.”

“Maybe not. But I’ll bet she’ll want to speak to the woman who was there when her sister’s body was recovered. And you’d be better off having someone from St. Alban’s there when you ask her about Katie’s connection to the church.”

“I will, huh? And this wouldn’t have anything to do with you wanting to be in on the investigation?”

“I’m already in on the investigation,” Clare pointed out. “This simply saves some time and lets me hear what she has to say firsthand. And if you’d like, I could help you tell her what happened to her sister. I’m . . . I took a course in grief work at the seminary.”

“Well, I never took any course. But I’ve broken this kind of news enough times to know what to do. The trick is to not leave ’em hanging. Get to the worst of it fast.”

Get to the worst of it fast, Russ reminded himself. He arrived Monday morning right at nine o’clock, opening time. He found the branch manager first off and filled her in on the situation. She expressed sympathy, and welcomed him to use her office when he told Kristen the bad news. She left for the service counter and came back with a young woman in tow.

“Kristen McWhorter?” Russ asked. The branch manager silently shut the door behind herself on the way out.

“Yes . . .” Kristen said, frowning. She was pretty, in a milkmaid sort of way that even her ink-dark punk hairstyle and thick black eyeliner couldn’t conceal. “Did my father do something?” she asked.

“Your father? No. I have some very bad news for you, Kristen. This past Friday we discovered your sister Katie’s body near the kill, about a quarter-mile upstream from Payson’s Park. She had been murdered.”

Kristen stood perfectly still, blinking. “No,” she said. “You’re mistaken. Katie’s in Albany. She’s a freshman at SUNY-Albany, and she hasn’t been home since school started. She’s in Albany.”

“She was identified in a photograph by someone who knew her in high school. We’d like you or your parents to view the body to make a positive identification.”

“I’ll go. I’ll go right now. It’s not Katie. She’s in Albany. I’ll get my coat right now. You have the wrong person. Oh, no, I’m starting my shift right now. I have to talk with Rosaline about getting off.”

Russ gestured through the glass walls at the manager. “I’ve already spoken with your boss, Kristen. Everything’s set.”

The manager came in carrying a heavy coat and a purse. “I brought these from the break room. They’re Kristen’s.”

Kristen grabbed at the purse and started scrabbling through it. “Wait! Wait! I can prove to you it isn’t Katie. I can call her house. I have her number. I have it here.” She dug through the purse like a small, desperate animal digging for shelter. She fished out a plastic address book the size of a box of cigarettes. “Here. Her number’s here. I can call her, she’s in Albany.” She looked around the office, frowning. “It’s a long distance number, though. Can I use your phone to make a long distance call, Rosaline?”

“Of course you can,” the manager said. She took Kristen by the shoulders and steered her to the phone on the laminate desk. “Go right ahead, Kristen.” She looked behind the girl’s back at Russ, asking him wordlessly for guidance. Kristen hammered out the number.

Russ made a smoothing gesture with his hands to let the manager know she was doing fine. “C’mon, c’mon . . .” Kristen said. “Pick up.” Her face brightened. “Emily!” she said. “It’s Kristen, Katie’s sister. Can I speak to Katie?” There was a pause. “Is she in class?” There was an even longer pause. Kristen’s eyes filled with tears and she pressed her palm against her mouth. She looked up at Russ. “She says Katie took a bus to Millers Kill on Friday morning. She hasn’t seen her since.” She blinked and the tears spilled over her cheeks. “Oh God, oh God . . .”

Russ held out his hand for the receiver. “Let me talk with her,” he said. Kristen surrendered the phone. “Hello, this is Russ Van Alstyne, Millers Kill Police. Who is this, please?”

“I’m Emily Colbaum. Katie’s housemate.” The voice on the other end of the line was shaky. “Has something happened to Katie?”

“I’m sorry, Miss Colbaum. We believe she was killed Friday night. Can I ask you a few—”

The sound of wailing cut him off. He waited. Kristen was leaning against the branch manager, mopping her eyes with a wad of damp tissues. She had black makeup smeared on her cheeks and her dried-blood-red lipstick had come off entirely. “Emily? Miss Colbaum?” he tried again. He was answered with more sobbing. He put his hand over the receiver. “Kristen, will you come over to the morgue with me now? Or do you need more time?”

She shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “If it’s her, I want to know. Let’s go.”

He tried the phone again. “Miss Colbaum? Emily, do you think you can talk with me? Or do you need some time to get yourself together?” She sobbed out something about feeling light-headed. “Emily, listen to me. Are you listening? Is there anyone else there at the house with you? Another roommate?”

There was a confusing sentence about Heather, who had missed an organic chemistry final.

“Good. I want you to give her a yell—” he held the phone away from his ear as she did just that. “Uh . . . good girl. You make sure she stays with you until you’re feeling calmer, okay? If you need to, you go on over to the university clinic and tell ’em what happened. There’ll be someone you can talk with there, maybe fix you up with a sedative if you need one.” Wet, weepy snuffles. “I’m going to give you the number of the police station here in Millers Kill. You got a pen and paper? Good girl.” He told her his direct office line. “I’ll be calling you to talk later, Emily, but in the meanwhile, if you think of anything, anything at all, call that number. If I’m not there, you can talk to our dispatcher, Harlene.”

Emily blubbed a watery thank you and hung up, promising to call with any information she might have.

Kristen was gamely struggling her way into her long black coat, crying soundlessly, mopping her face with the ineffectual tissues. “Would you like me to come with her?” the manager asked, her face creased with what Russ judged to be equal parts worry over her employee and the prospect of leaving the bank unattended on a Monday morning.

“No, I have a, um, grief specialist waiting for us at the morgue. We’ll make sure Miss McWhorter’s taken care of.”

He held the office door open for the women. “Kristen, don’t worry about coming in to work tomorrow,” the manager said. “I’ll make sure your shifts are covered. Take all the time you need, honey.” She hugged the girl awkwardly.

Outside, it was another bitterly cold and clear day. Kristen rubbed her gloved hands over her cheeks as they drove. The heater wheezed and complained and started warming the car minutes before they reached the county morgue’s parking lot. Clare was already there, waiting in an older-model cherry-red MG that was going to give her more trouble than she could imagine on the winter roads. She got out as he parked the cruiser.

“Let’s get inside before we do introductions,” he yelled across the lot. She nodded and disappeared into the building, climbing the steps two at a time. He held Kristen’s arm to steady her until they got into the waiting room, then released her to help her out of her enormous coat. She had stopped crying and was looking around her with the same absorption she would have shown watching a fascinating movie. Not that there was anything fascinating about the dun-colored walls that someone had attempted to brighten with scenic travel posters. He had seen that look before, many times. It was the look you got when the bottom fell out of your world, and your own life seemed as distant and unreal as any big-screen fantasy.

“Kristen?” Clare took the girl’s coat from Russ and tossed it on a chair next to her own. “I’m Clare Fergusson.” She held out a hand to Kristen, who took it mechanically. “I was there when your sister’s body was discovered.” Kristen’s lips flexed and quivered. “I’m also a priest.” Given the clerical collar peeking out from underneath her black sweater, Russ thought that was pretty self-evident. He went to the window separating the waiting room from records storage. Tapping the bell three times brought the morgue assistant, who took in the scene in the waiting room and went to unlock the inner doors without a word. “Would you like me to come with you?” Clare went on, gently leading Kristen to the hallway. “Sometimes, it can make it less scary to be with someone else.”

Kristen stopped, looked into Clare’s face. “I’ve never seen a body before,” she said. “Isn’t that strange?”

“No, not strange at all,” Clare said, linking her arm through the girl’s. “It’s not bad, like you might think. Death looks different from life, from sleeping, but it’s not ugly.”

Russ had seen more than a few ugly deaths in his time, but he knew enough to keep his mouth shut. The attendant paused at a small desk outside of the body storage room. “We’re here to identify the Jane Doe,” Russ said quietly.

The attendant made a note in the log book. “She’s in number three,” he said, looking at Kristen’s black-smeared face. “You can go in alone, miss, or I could come with you, or . . . ?”

She shook her head at the young man and tightened her hold on Clare’s arm. “Will you come?” she asked. “I forgot your name.”

“I’m Clare. Yes, I’ll come with you.”

The attendant opened the dull metal door. Russ caught a glimpse of white tile and harsh fluorescent lighting before the door closed again, Clare and Kristen on the other side. It was a lousy place for a person to end up, laid out naked in a stainless steel drawer. Of course, there were worse ways to finish it. Zippered inside a body bag and hustled into a refrigerated cargo hold, for instance. He shut his hand reflexively. At times like these, he could still feel the material they made those bags from. He stilled his breathing, forcing himself not to get impatient to leave Death’s waiting room. What the hell was taking them so long?

Clare pushed the door open, letting Kristen pass through first. The girl looked into Russ’s eyes, her own dazed, full of clouds. “It’s her. It’s my sister.” She bit down hard on her lip. “I thought . . . I thought she’d finally be safe once she was in Albany. Once she was away. Why did she come back?” Fresh tears rose in her eyes. “Why did she come back?”

CHAPTER 9

“Kristen, what did you mean when you said you thought your sister would be safe once she was away at school?” Russ handed Kristen black coffee in a mug decorated with fat country sheep and geese, part of a set his sister had given them one Christmas that he and Linda had agreed were too damn cutesie-poo to keep at home. He hated Styrofoam cups: too small, too fragile, and too wasteful.

Kristen bent over the mug until her face was almost obscured by ink-colored hair and steam. “Nothing. I don’t know. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

He dumped three teaspoons of sugar into another mug and handed it to Clare. She was sitting kitty-corner to Kristen, a Millers Kill P.D. tape recorder at her left hand. After Kristen had identified her sister’s body, the girl couldn’t get out of the morgue fast enough. She had agreed to give her statement at the police station, where Harlene, in full mother-hen mode, had fussed over her, fetching coffee and strudel from the dispatch room, opening the shades in the briefing room to let in the sunlight.

“You know, sometimes, the first thing that comes to mind is the right thing, no matter how bizarre or improbable it seems,” Clare said. “It could be your intuition was trying to tell you something. What was it, Kristen?”

The young woman put down her mug and smoothed her hands over her face. She had washed up in the station’s unisex bathroom—unisex by virtue of having both urinals and a tampon machine—and without her black and purple and red makeup, she looked like one of the pretty country girls from up the hills past Cossayaharie. Katie must have borne a strong resemblance to her sister before her death.

“Can you tell me how she died?”

Russ sat down in a red leatherette chair, cradling his coffee to warm his hands. “She was hit in the back of the head by something heavy and blunt, hard enough to make her unconscious. Then she was rolled off the trail downhill, to the edge of the kill. The medical examiner believes she died of hypothermia, that she never woke up.”

“How did she get out there? Do you know?”

“Only that it was a four-wheel-drive vehicle with all-weather tires. The wheel width indicates a truck or a sport-utility vehicle. We don’t know if your sister was conscious when she reached the trail, or if her killer drove her there after she had been knocked out.”

Kristen closed her hands over her face again for a moment. “What a weird thing to say,” she said. “Her killer. Like, her sister, her teacher, her boyfriend. Her killer. Somebody with a relationship to her.” She frowned. “Was she molested? Had she been, you know . . .”

“No,” Russ said. He glanced at Clare.

“What? What is it?” Kristen’s gaze flickered between the two of them. He tilted his head, passing the job of telling about the baby to the one who had found him.

“There is something else, Kristen,” Clare said. “According to the medical report, Katie had a baby within the past two weeks. We have strong reason to believe that she, or someone, left the baby on the back steps of St. Alban’s church a week ago. He’s in foster care right now.”

“He?”

“A little boy, yes. She left a note, naming him Cody.”

Kristen’s face contorted. “Oh . . . she always loved that name. She used to say if she had a boy, she’d name him Cody, and if she had a girl, she’d name her Corinne.” She squeezed her nose and eyes, trying to stifle more tears. “I can’t believe Katie would give her baby away. I just can’t believe it. Unless he made her!”

“Who made her, Kristen?”

She was crying openly now, shaking her head. “Our father.”

Clare and Russ looked at each other. “Your father would’ve made her give up her child because she wasn’t married?” Clare asked.

“No, no . . .” Kristen blew her nose on one of the paper napkins Harlene had piled next to the strudel. She took a shaky breath. “My father would have forced her to give up a baby if he was its father.”

Russ felt as if someone had thrown a bucket of the kill’s icy water over him. Clare was pale, but calm. “Kristen, what are you saying? Did your father sexually abuse Katie?”

Kristen pushed her hands through her short hair. “I don’t know. I really don’t know. But he used to do it to me.”

“Jesus,” Russ exclaimed, under his breath.

“Can you tell us, Kristen?”

The girl looked at Clare, indecision and grief warring on her features. “It’s hard. It’s hard to talk about.”

“Listen, Kristen,” Russ said, “You don’t have to be afraid of your father. Give me his name and address and he’ll be in the county jail before five o’clock.” With maybe an unscheduled stop on the way, where the bastard could fall down a few flights of stairs by accident. Nobody at the jail would make a comment.

“No, please!” Kristen said. “I don’t want to press charges. I got away, and that’s all I wanted. I thought Katie had escaped, too . . .”

“Tell us, Kristen. You don’t have to sign out a complaint against your father if you don’t want to.” Clare forestalled Russ’s complaint with a swift glance that said, “Back off.”

“I . . . I . . .”

Clare held out her hand, flat on the tabletop. “Take my hand and tell me. If it gets too hard, just squeeze as tightly as you can.”

The girl tentatively placed her hand in the priest’s. She took another breath heavy with unshed tears. “Okay. I’ll try.” She shut her eyes. “My father started in on me when I was around fourteen or so. Katie would have been twelve. I wasn’t dumb, I knew that what he was doing was wrong. But I was afraid to tell anyone, because without him, how would we live? He had his business—and he’s got disability and social security money. Mom was useless. Worse than useless. She would have denied he was fooling with me up one side and down another. Besides, she would have fallen apart without him. So I just . . . hung on. I knew girls who dropped out of school, or got pregnant to get a boy or the state to take care of them, but I wanted something more than that. I knew that if I could just last until I finished high school, I could get a decent job, make enough money to live on. So that’s what I did.”

“For four years?” Clare asked quietly.

“Uh huh.”

Russ felt sick. His muscles shook from the effort of sitting still and not pacing around the room, pounding on the walls.

“I started working at the bank the day after I graduated, and as soon as I had my first paycheck, I was out of there. I begged Katie to come with me, but she wouldn’t. She said Mom needed her.” She bit down on her lip. “I think she was worried that it would be too much, me trying to support the two of us until Katie finished high school. And she was really ambitious, too. She was so smart, her teachers all said she could get a scholarship. She wanted a college degree more than anything.”