In the Bleak Midwinter

“—rests directly on blocks, so that the insulation can be applied—”

She needed to be getting more sleep. Through diamond-paned windows, she could see the front corner of St. Alban’s, its stone walls massed like a storm front against the wan December light. So little daylight on a Friday afternoon, she thought, already noon and only four more hours ’til sunset. A month or more until she could see longer days. She flexed her shoulders back, stretching the neckline of her thick wool sweater, causing her collar to tug against her throat. She turned her attention back to the table, where Vaughn Fowler was calling the vote.

“Aye,” she said, copying the rest of the votes. Had she just agreed to replacing the hot water heater with a nuclear powered furnace?

“All right, then, we’re agreed to hold off replacing Old Bessy until the replacement prices go down this summer.”

Serves you right, missy, she could hear her grandmother Fergusson say. If you’re cold, put on another sweater.

Terence McKellan and Mrs. Marshall pushed their high-backed chairs away from the table. “Before you go,” Clare said, “I’d like to update you on the Burnses’ situation. The letter-writing campaign is going very well, with lots of participation. The police have a strong lead on the identity of Cody’s father, and as soon as he’s identified, we’re going to try to persuade him to sign adoption papers naming the Burnses as parents.” At least she hoped someone would be able to get the paperwork in front of him before Russ hauled him off to jail. “With that in mind, I have some more facts and figures about the mother-and-baby outreach project that I intend to present at our next meeting.”

Sterling Sumner harrumphed, but the rest of the board managed at least polite expressions of interest. The meeting adjourned. Clare headed straight for the coffee machine. She poured herself a cup, yawning convulsively.

“Tired?” Terry McKellan grinned. His coat’s moulton collar, the same color as his moustache, made his fat, friendly face look like Mr. Badger in Wind in the Willows.

Clare nodded. “You’d think with sixteen hours of night, I’d be getting more sleep, wouldn’t you?”

He grinned. “Only if you’re not up on police business.”

Clare started. She hadn’t told anyone about chasing down Darrell McWhorter’s murder scene or questioning Kristen. “What? I’m sorry, I don’t . . . ?”

“I understand there was a cop car in your driveway last night.” He winked. “And your car was at the police chief’s all night Wednesday. Small town, Reverend Clare.”

She gaped. “Good heavens.” Gossip had simply never occured to her. Especially when the whole thing was so innocent.

McKellan grinned again, wiggling his badger-colored eyebrows for effect. “May be time to trade that MG of yours for something less conspicuious. Come to my bank, I’ll make sure you get a great rate on a loan.”

“Mr. McKellan! Chief Van Alstyne is a married man!”

“So?”

She sighed with exasperation. “He had been in an armed confrontation earlier that day. I was at his place Wednesday for counseling.” Stretch the truth too far, missy, and it’ll snap back to hit you in the nose, her grandmother said. She ignored the waspish voice. “It was snowing hard by the time I left, so he drove me home instead of me taking my car, which, as everyone keeps pointing out, is terrible in winter driving conditions.”

McKellan looked disappointed.

“Last night, he stopped by around dinner and I invited him to share a little stew with me while we discussed the Burnses and the baby.” It really had been entirely innocent. She had never done or said anything to Russ that she couldn’t have done or said in front of the entire vestry. So why did she feel like she was lying to Terry McKellan?

He squeezed her sweatered arm. “I’m suitably chastized. Next person I hear talking about it, I’ll set him straight.”

“Thank you.”

“You should still come in and see me about a car loan, though.”

In the parish office, Clare hitched one hip onto the unnaturally neat desk. “Lois, have you heard any gossip about—” she looked at the secretary’s disdainful expression. “Never mind.”

Lois tore off a pink memo slip and handed it to the priest. “Gossip.” She sniffed. “Never listen to it, never repeat it.”

Clare glanced at Lois’s Parker-penmanship writing. “The Department of Social Services? For me? How did—” she looked at the memo again, “—Ms. Dunkling sound?”

“Ms. Dunkling sounded just a tad put out.”

“Just a tad, huh? Guess that means the letter-writing campaign is having some effect.”

Lois lowered her reading glasses and raised her eyebrows. “Uh-huh.”

“No sense putting it off. Better beard the lion in her den. Lioness.” Clare reversed step in the hall and poked her head back through the door. “And can you speak to Mr. Hadley about getting some wood and kindling into my office? I don’t intend to shiver all winter long with a perfectly good fireplace just sitting there.”

She pretended to ignore the warning that floated down the hallway after her. “Winter hasn’t even begun yet, Reverend . . .”

The radiator was wheezing under its window in a respectable effort to take the chill off. Clare slipped her copy of Mr. Corlew’s report in the “Building Maintenance” file, which already took up an entire desk drawer and threatened to spill over into a cardboard filing box at any moment. She poured a cup of coffee from her thermos, grimaced at the taste, and abandoned it on the bookshelf cabinet. Her desk chair creaked and snapped as she sat down and reached for the phone. Waiting for Ms. Dunkling to come on the line, she flipped through her calendar. Infirmary visits. Music meeting. Stewardship committee. Marriage counseling. “Yes, hello. Angela Dunkling, please. Clare Fergusson.” She frowned and jotted down a note to call Kristen McWhorter about the funerals. “Ms. Dunkling? This is Clare Fergusson of St. Alban’s.”

“Yes, Ms. Fergusson. I called you about these letters I’ve been getting from your membership.” The voice on the other end of the line sounded nasal and inflectionless, like someone who had long ago memorized her speech and could recite it without thought or effort. “DSS is not an organization you can lobby, Ms. Fergusson. We have a legislative mandate to answer only to the best interests of the families we serve. Taking time out to read and answer a bunch of letters only results in less time and resources for our vital mission to protect the children of New York.”

Clare frowned. “Are you saying that getting information about Cody’s prospective adoptive parents isn’t an important part of your job?”

Angela Dunkling let out an irritated snort. “Of course it is. Believe me, we have considerable information on the Burnses already. We don’t need to hear from everybody who goes to church with them about what a great couple they are.”

Clare tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. If the letters were so ineffective, why was she getting this call from a DSS caseworker? “Why not simply file the letters in with the other information you have, then? Why are you answering them?”

“Let’s not pussyfoot around this, okay? Your people are sending us letters, and they’re getting their state legislators and senators to send us letters, too. I don’t need some House Rep breathing down my neck over this just because some supporter of his has decided the Burnses would make ideal parents. It’s our job to determine what living arrangements will serve the best interest of the child. We’re still waiting on the police investigation to try to track down the biological parents of the child.”

“Parent. His mother is dead.”

“Father, then. The child can’t be cleared for adoption until we’ve made a final determination of his status vis-à-vis his father or living relatives.”

“So meanwhile, Cody spends his first formative year in a foster home instead of with his future parents?”

“Ms. Fergusson, he’s in a perfectly good home with a caring, experienced foster mom. I’ll give you her number and you can check her out yourself if you’re so concerned.” There was a pause, the faint sound of a Filofax flipping. “Deborah McDonald. 555-9385. Believe me, we’re not running orphanages out of Charles Dickens.” Ms. Dunkling sighed exasperatedly. “Do you have any idea how many prospective parents are out there looking for the Great White Baby? There are couples who’ve been on lists a lot longer than the Burnses. Why should they get to jump line?”

“Because Cody’s biological parents left a note saying so?”

“Forget it. Call off your hounds, Ms. Fergusson. We don’t need the additional headache and believe me, it’s not going to alter our final disposition in the case. If you want to help the Burnses, tell them to settle down and learn to work with the system instead of trying to manipulate it to serve their own purposes. And tell them to stop making unauthorized visits to Mrs. McDonald. They know the rules.”

“What—they’ve been just stopping by to see Cody? That’s a problem?”

“Yeah, it is a problem. As prospective adoptive parents, they shouldn’t be seeing the child without DSS supervision. Call Mrs. McDonald, she’ll tell you. Wednesday, Geoff Burns showed up without so much as a phone call at eight o’clock at night. Believe me, stunts like that aren’t going to help their application any.”

Clare rested a hand on her open calendar. “This past Wednesday? The eighth?” The night Darrell McWhorter was killed.

“Yeah. Why?”

“No reason. Yes, I’ll talk with them about that.”

“And you’ll stop the letters?”

Clare paused for a fraction of a second. “I’ll pass on your comments to my parishioners. I can only suggest, I can’t order them to do anything.”

The DSS caseworker grunted. “I’ll look forward to being able to get back to work without attempts at coercion, then.”

Clare rang off quickly. She tapped a finger on the square labeled “Wednesday, 8th.” Eight o’clock. Russ said they had told his officers they had been home all night. Perhaps Geoff Burns considered that to be the end of the workday and not the night? Maybe he stopped by Mrs. McDonald’s on his way home and hadn’t thought to mention it. Maybe he had driven straight home and spent the rest of the night watching TV with his wife. Maybe he had a passenger in his car when he visited Cody. Maybe he killed Darrell McWhorter, drove to Albany, rifled Katie’s room and returned to Millers Kill with no one the wiser.

Clare folded her arms against her desk and slid flat until her head was resting on her arms. Dear Lord. She closed her eyes. Please, please don’t let me have been wrong about them.

CHAPTER 20

Clare grimaced at the back of the eighteen-wheeler spraying dirty slush over her windshield. The plows had cleared the roads efficiently after Wednesday’s snowfall, but the same wet combination of grit and salt that gave her enough traction to navigate through the winding hills to Fort Henry had turned her car’s Scarlet Metallic Special Lacquer finish—for which she had paid an extra seven hundred dollars in the days when she was young and flush—into a drab sparrow color identical to every other car she passed. She wondered how Russ and his officers identified vehicles when they all looked as if they’d been spray-painted with industrial waste. He was right, she was going to have to get another car. She could almost hear the salt eating away at the undercarriage as she drove.

She glanced down at the directions Deborah McDonald had given her. “I’d be happy for you to come call, Reverend,” the foster mother had told her in their brief phone call. “All the ways I’ve had babies come into my care, and never by being dropped at a church doorstep. It’s a miracle you were there, that’s what I believe. A miracle.” Clare gripped her steering wheel more tightly and thumbed a spray of blue antifreeze across the windshield.

The McDonald’s vinyl-sided garrison looked as if it had been plucked from some densely populated suburb and capriciously planted on a windy hillside surrounded by pasturage. Two life-sized plastic snowmen flanking the front steps and a plyboard Santa-with-reindeer did nothing to ease the loneliness of the house, whose only neighbor was a dairy farm a half mile down the twisting road.

The woman who opened the door to Clare’s knock was like her home, a disconcerting blend of bare-bones plainness and cozy domesticity. Angular, unhandsome, with tightly permed hair and coffee colored eyes, wearing double-knit polyester pants and a sweatshirt decorated with puffy bears. Deborah McDonald smiled widely and took both Clare’s hands in her own.

“You must be the minister. I’m so glad to meet you. Come in, come in!” Her kitchen was country cute and immaculate. “I was saying to Keith, that’s my husband, that of all the babies I took in, there never was one left on the church steps. Thank goodness you were there. Take off your coat! Can I offer you some coffee? Hot cocoa? You have to tell me what to call you. Our minister goes by the name of Mr. Simms—we’re Church of Christ—but I know you folks may do differently. We have lady ministers, too, you know. Not here, of course, but other places. I seem to recall reading in the Evangel there was one in New Jersey.”

Clare accepted the proffered coffee. The geese marching around the rim reminded her of the mugs in Russ’s office. “Call me Clare. Please. I appreciate you seeing me, Mrs. McDonald.”

“Deborah, call me Deborah. All these years and ‘Mrs. McDonald’ still sounds like my mother-in-law, though she’s eighty and living up at the Infirmary now.” She tilted her head toward a bulletin board covered with photographs of infants, children, teens, and young adults. “After all the kids I’ve had, ‘Mom’ seems more natural than my own name.”

Clare examined the faces on the wall. “Looks like quite a crew. They must have kept you busy.”

Deborah laughed. “Still do. I make it my business to knit something for each one of my kids for Christmas. Hats, scarves, mittens, the like. I start in January. I’m down to just three more to go. Four, including Cody. I’m doing up a little hat for him.”

Clare, whose only craft accomplishment was refinishing furniture, almost missed the baby’s name while contemplating the scope of the foster mother’s gift-making project. Cody. Right. “Is the baby asleep?”

“Lord, yes, you’d be able to hear him if he wasn’t. He’s a noisy boy, that one, always wanting to talk with us.” Deborah gestured Clare through the archway leading from the kitchen into the living room. “He gets the cutest expression, too, like he’s thinking, ‘Who said that?’ whenever he makes a noise.” She led Clare through a carpeted hallway into a white-walled nursery with two cribs. The windows and cribs were swathed with petticoat fabric, and dancing bears lined the walls like gingerbread men.

Cody sprawled in the middle of one of the cribs, his round tummy pushing out his fuzzy blue sleeper. “Gosh. He’s gotten bigger. I can’t believe it’s only been ten days since I saw him last.” Clare found it hard to connect this fat and contented infant with the bundle she had unwrapped that night in the parish kitchen.

“He’s close to ten pounds. The doctor’s very pleased.”

Ten pounds must be good. “Shouldn’t he be sleeping on his stomach?”

“Oh, no. Only on the back, we know that these days. Cuts down on the instances of crib death.” Deborah smiled at Cody, the chocolate-sundae smile people get around babies. “We don’t want anything happening to this little guy.”

Clare reached inside the crib. “May I?”

“Touch him? Go ahead, until he’s hungry again nothing’s going to wake him up.”

Clare settled her whole hand over Cody’s head and blessed him with an inarticulate surge of tenderness and amazement that the most helpless of creatures were caught and held by God. As she signed the cross on his forehead, Deborah nudged her arm and pointed to a needlepoint hanging near the window. HE KEEPS HIS EYE ON THE SPARROW it read. “Yes,” Clare said. “Yes, he does.”

In the living room, Clare admired more pictures of graduations and proms and weddings before getting to the point. “I understand the Burnses have been visiting Cody. Did Ms. Dunkling from DSS tell you about the note that was left with Cody?”

“Ayuh, she did, she’s kept me up to date on everything about Cody. She’s wonderful that way.”

“Is it true Mr. Burns was here this past Wednesday? In the evening?”

“Ayuh, though that’s not the only time it’s happened. Mrs. Burns showed up at the pediatrician’s office when I took Cody in for his checkup. And they came ’round unsupervised a day or two after I got him, although to be fair, there hadn’t been much time to arrange a proper visitation and they did call first.”

“Did Mr. Burns call before he stopped by that night?”

Deborah crossed her legs, a slither of polyester. “No, he didn’t, and to tell you the truth, the whole visit made me nervous. I won’t say he was drunk, because he wasn’t, but he smelled like he had definitely dropped off at the Dew Drop Inn for a few after work.”

Clare shook her head. “After work?”

“I figured he must have left his office, gone out for a beer or two and then hit on the bright idea to visit Cody. He was still in his coat and tie. Really, I don’t like to complain. I understand how hard it is for the adoptive parents to wait, and I’m not against a few visits. I like the company, and it’s good for the kids and the parents. But, Lord!” She threw her hands in the air. “I can’t have folks showing up here at eight o’clock at night, sulking all over my living room and disturbing the baby’s routine.”

“Geoff Burns seemed sulky?”

“I guess angry would be a better word. He showed up without so much as a by-your-leave, invited himself in just as I was getting ready for Cody’s eight o’clock feeding, and acted mad at the whole world. Insisted on holding the baby, but he was so mad or tense or something that he got Cody all riled up and the poor thing wouldn’t settle down to his bottle for over half an hour.” She leaned forward. “Babies can sense people’s moods very well in their body language, you know.”

Clare took a drink of coffee. The newspaper headline she envisioned, PRIEST SUPPORTS MURDERER’S ATTEMPT TO ADOPT VICTIM’S CHILD had been joined by a subsidiary lead: DIOCESE SUED BY DEPARTMENT OF HUMAN SERVICES.

“Deborah,” she said, “how long does it take to get to the Old Schuylerville Road from here?”

“Hmmm? Are you heading that way next? Let’s see, if you take the turn at Power’s Corners and then use old Route eleven, you can reach it in about ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes.” Long enough to get to the spot where Darrell McWhorter’s body had been dumped, take off for Albany, and still be home in time to meet the Millers Kill police at his front door. Clare had a sudden urge to drive to the Burnses’ office right that minute. She wanted the truth from them, no matter how wrong it might prove her instincts.

She put her coffee on a needlepoint coaster. “Deborah, thank you so much for having me over to take a look at Cody and chat.” She stood. “I’d like to stop by and see him again sometime, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Deborah McDonald stood, gathering the mugs in one hand. “Not at all. I’m glad of the company, like I said.”

The two women walked to the kitchen. “I promise you I’ll talk to the Burnses and mention your concerns.”

The foster mother unhooked Clare’s coat from the rack. “I appreciate the chance to let ’em know without having to go through DHS and making it all official. I’m sure they’re perfectly nice people. Just terrible eager for their baby by this point, I imagine. I’ve seen it before. Waiting on a baby when you can’t have one of your own makes folks a little crazy at times.”

Clare had to drive around the block three times before a parking space opened up. It looked as if the boutique owners at this end of Main Street would have a merry Christmas. She could have found a space more readily a few blocks away, but she still hadn’t gotten around to shopping for new boots and her low suede ones had already seen more than enough snow and salt.

The Burnses’ receptionist looked up, startled, when Clare came through the stairwell door.

“Ummm . . . can I help you?”

“Yes. I’m Clare Fergusson. I need to see Mr. Burns right away. Or Mrs. Burns, if he’s unavailable.” Clare unzipped her coat and let it drop onto the asymmetrically striped sofa.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Burns is in court all afternoon and Mrs. Burns is working out of her home today. I could make you an appointment for tomorrow . . . ?”

“Oh—” Clare bit down hard on what she had been about to say, “—gosh darn.” She snatched up her coat again. “No, thanks. I’ll try to get Mrs. Burns at home.”

On the drive to the Burnses’ house, Clare tried out what she might say. Karen, did your husband shoot Darrell McWhorter? Or how about, Karen, did your husband father a child and try to cover it up with this abandoned-at-the-church-doorstep scheme and when that fell through, did he start killing everyone else involved? “Oh, shoot me now,” Clare groaned.

The Burnses’ house was a brick Italianate revival with five-foot-high windows and a cupola that must have given them a view of the entire town. Wreaths decorated with wooden fruits hung from the deeply-paneled front doors, which had the look of an unused entrance. Down the long drive, by the separate garage at the corner of the house, Clare found the back door.

Karen Burns opened at the second ring. “Reverend Fergusson? What brings you out here?”

“Well, I—” Clare stamped her boots on the welcome mat.

“Please, come on in. No need to stand in the cold to talk.”

Clare pushed into the narrow hall lined with hanging coats, boots, shelves of hats and gloves. She left her coat, following Karen into the kitchen.

“Is this about the letter-writing campaign? I’ve gotten some wonderfully supportive notes and phone calls from people, you know. Mrs. Strathclyde told me she actually called our congressman’s office to complain. Can you believe it?” Karen led Clare through a high-ceilinged, granite-countered kitchen into a small den done up in burgundy and hunter green. Karen waved at the glass-fronted barrister’s bookcases and the computer centered on a wide mahogany desk. “My home office. I work here about seventy-five percent of the time, now. When we adopt Cody, I’ll be able to switch to a twenty-hour-a-week schedule without making any drastic changes.” She gestured toward a tapestry-covered love seat.

Clare sat. She took a steadying breath. “Karen, I didn’t come to discuss the letters.”

Karen sank gracefully into a green leather chair. “You didn’t.”

“I know that the police have been asking you about the night Darrell McWhorter was killed. I know you both claim to have come straight home from work.”

“Claim?”

Clare leaned forward, trying to meet the other woman’s eyes. Karen tilted her head, examining her hands. Her fingernail polish matched the study’s rug. “I know Geoff wasn’t at home at eight o’clock that night. He was at Cody’s foster mother’s house. Wearing a suit and tie, as if he’d come straight from work, and smelling as if he’d had a drink or two.”

The lawyer looked straight at Clare, her beautiful face calm. “What are you suggesting?”

“It looks bad, that’s what I’m suggesting! Karen, you two have got to tell the police the truth. What happened that night?”

Karen looked toward the bookcase. “Nothing.” She compressed her lips into a tight line. “I don’t know.”

Clare slid to the end of the love seat until their knees almost touched. “Tell me what you do know.”

The other woman continued staring at the bookcase. Clare touched her arm. “Please, Karen. I want to help you. And Geoff. But you have to be honest with me.”

There was a pause. Slowly, Karen turned her head to face the priest. “We had a horrible fight that afternoon in the office. We had been arguing about what approach to take with McWhorter all day long and we got . . . it just . . . anyway, I told him what he could do, and took off. I was so angry with him I wanted to . . .” She blew out a breath. “I did a little shopping, I called my mother, I fixed some stir fry for dinner—you know, working the mad off.” She laced her fingers together. “Dinnertime came and went, with no Geoff, and no phone call. I started to get worried. I mean, really worried; the weather was bad and he was driving the little Honda Civic. Finally, finally he showed up around ten or so.” She shook her head. “I didn’t know whether to kill him or kiss him. Turns out he’d been out at the Dew Drop Inn most of the night. I don’t know how he managed to get himself home, he was in no condition to drive. I was horrified! He could have killed himself. Not to mention the damage to his reputation if he had been picked up. The last thing we need is a morals censure from the Bar Association or a D.U.I. conviction on his record.”

Clare pressed her forefingers against her mouth to refrain from mentioning that Geoff could just as well have killed other people out on the roads that night. “Does this sort of thing happen often?” she asked, her voice neutral.

“God, no. Geoff’s idea of a blowout indulgence is a bottle of Nouveaux Beaujolais the week it hits the stores. So you can imagine how I felt when those two officers showed up at the door asking where we had been that evening! All I could think of was Geoff being hauled in for questioning. So I told them we’d been home all night, having a few drinks and watching TV.” She sagged back into her chair. “Geoff just went along with my story.” Her gaze went to the ceiling, as if looking for the Fates lurking there. “Yesterday, when we learned that McWhorter had been killed, it was too damn late to recant. There wasn’t anyone except a few anonymous bar patrons to say he’d been at the Dew Drop instead of . . .”

“Instead of taking Darrell McWhorter on his last drive to Albany?”

“Yes. We had already lied to the police. As you said, it looks bad.”

Clare tilted her head back, closing her eyes. Did she believe Karen Burns? Yes? The question was, did she believe Geoff Burns told the truth to his wife? “You’ve got to tell this to the police. You and Geoff.”

“No!”

“Do you believe your husband’s story about what happened Wednesday night?”

“Yes, of course. He would never lie to me.”

“Then tell Chief Van Alstyne. Geoff’s absence that night is going to come out sooner or later. If you wait until the police find out on their own, the two of you are going to look guilty as sin. Go to Van Alstyne’s office, tell him what you’ve just told me, admit that you were both royal idiots to lie about it, and offer to enroll Geoff in one of those driver education courses. Voluntarily.”

“What? There’s no way they can prove drunk driving after the fact—”

“We’re not talking about legalities, Karen, we’re talking about admitting you did something wrong and setting it right. Confession and repentance.” She braced her elbows on her knees. “Because on a moral and emotional level, you aren’t going to be able to continue on with this lie weighing you down. And because on a practical level, if you don’t cop to the drinking and driving and lying, your husband’s going to look like a murderer when the police do find out.”

Karen pressed the palm of her hand to her forehead, half-shielding her face from Clare’s direct stare. “There’s a good chance they won’t find out,” she said, trying the idea on for size.

Clare exploded out of the love seat. “There’s no chance Chief Van Alstyne won’t find out, Karen, because if you don’t tell him, I will!”

“You can’t do that!”

“I can’t tell him anything of this conversation we’re having right now, no. I can certainly tell him Ms. Dunkling of the Department of Human Services called me to complain that your husband was at Cody’s foster mother’s house Wednesday night. And I can tell him Deborah McDonald confirmed Geoff was upset and smelled like he’d been drinking.”

Clare collapsed back into the love seat. “I’ll do everything I can to help you talk to the police. I’ll do everything I can to help you become Cody’s parents. But I won’t compromise the truth for you. I won’t help you stand in the way of finding Katie McWhorter’s killer. We owe her that. We all owe her that.”

“You’re lucky he’s in. Five minutes more and you would have missed him.” Harlene punched the intercom button on her heavy, licorice-colored telephone. “Chief? Reverend Clare’s here to see you. And Karen Burns.”

The door to his office banged open and the chief of police strode out. His gaze flicked between Clare and Karen, back to Clare, finally settling on Mrs. Burns. “What can I do for you ladies?”

Clare tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, suddenly aware of the effortless chic of the woman standing beside her. She looked like a badly tailored crow next to Karen’s drapey wool separates and hundred-dollar haircut. Which was ridiculous. Appearance was not what was important here. She tugged her bulky, faded sweater down, revealing more of her clerical collar.

“Mrs. Burns?” Russ said. “Reverend Fergusson?”

Karen looked uneasily at Clare. “I . . . uh . . . was going to wait for my husband, but he’s being held over in a deposition . . .”

Russ tilted his head a little to the side. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Why don’t you come into the interview room with me. We can be more private there.”

Karen nodded. “Clare, will you stay with me?”

“Of course.”

Russ looked at her hard while pulling out a chair for Karen, asking what was going on as clearly as if he’d said it. Clare raised her eyebrows, radiating encouragement. He rolled his eyes at her before crossing the room and taking a seat opposite Karen. Clare seated herself.

“Mind if I tape this? I hate to have misunderstandings later on because we’re remembering different things.” He rested his hand easily on a cheap portable tape recorder.

Karen frowned. “As long as you make it clear I’m speaking without an attorney.”

“Oh? Do you need one?”

Karen flushed. “As you say, I’d just hate to have misunderstandings later on.”

He nodded, turning on the tape machine. “This is Chief Van Alstyne, interviewing Karen Burns.” He glanced at Clare. “Accompanied by her priest, Reverend Clare Fergusson. Ms. Burns is unrepresented by legal counsel.” He looked at Karen. She nodded. “The date is Friday, December tenth, and the time is . . .” he glanced at his watch, “six P.M.”

Karen took a deep breath and began. Clare listened to her voice, calm and orderly. Her recounting of the events of Wednesday night was organized, yet compelling. Clare propped her chin in her hand, struck by Karen’s poise. She must make a dynamic advocate in court. Russ, on the other hand, looked less than impressed. He sat with one hand resting on the tape recorder and the other splayed across a pad of paper. Clare supposed his expression could qualify as neutral, but she could see something underneath. Disapproval? Skepticism? She bit her lower lip. It was important that he treat Karen right. How else could he encourage this kind of honesty?

When she concluded her story, Karen folded her hands, as if waiting for comment. Russ chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment. He tapped the tape machine a few times. “Your husband was driving a Honda Civic that night?”

“That’s correct. He uses it instead of his Saab when the roads are salty.”

“Has he driven it anywhere since that night?”

“Yes . . . he’s got it today. He likes me to keep the Land Rover, in case I need the four-wheel-drive. Why?”

“Was he drinking at the Dew Drop Inn before he went to Mrs. McDonald’s?”

“No, that’s in the opposite direction from our office and her house. Um . . . he didn’t actually say, but I assumed he’d gone to the Sign of the Musket after work. That’s where we usually go for Happy Hour.”

“Mrs. Burns, when you spoke to Officer Entwhistle Wednesday night, you said you own a nine millimeter Smith and Wesson, registered to yourself, and that you keep it in your Land Rover for times when you’re on the road by yourself.”

“That’s . . . correct. I have clients spread out between Albany and Plattsburgh, and a woman traveling alone can be vulnerable. What relevance does this have, Chief?”

“Is that gun still in your Land Rover?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Yes!”

Russ nodded. He popped the tape from the machine and rose from the table. “Will you wait here for a moment? I’ll be right back.” He closed the door on his way out.

Karen jerked around in her seat. “Clare, I don’t like this. I do not like this at all.”

Clare rested her hand on the other woman’s forearm. “Karen, we knew he’d be suspicious. After all, you did lie before. I’m sure Chief Van Alstyne wants to check with someone at the, what was it? Sign of the Musket? And at the Dew Drop Inn.”

“You’re right.” Karen sighed. “He’s going to want to talk to Geoff, too. Oh, God, I should have just waited for him to get back from that damn deposition. We could have done this tomorrow.”

By which time, Geoff could have argued her out of talking to the police. Clare patted Karen’s arm and tried not to doubt Geoff Burns when she hadn’t even had the chance to talk with him.

The women sat in silence as the minutes crawled by. Clare got up and checked the coffeemaker, but it was cold and dry. The plate beside it was empty. No homemade strudel today.

“What on earth is taking him so long?” Karen demanded. She pushed her chair back and stood. “I’m going to find a phone. I want to call the office and see if Geoff’s there yet.”

“Maybe you should wait until you hear what Chief Van Alstyne has to—”

The door opened. Russ and Officer Durkee walked in. The young man smiled discreetly at Clare, who waggled her fingers at him. He’d been good company at the hospital the night she’d found Cody.

Russ cleared his throat. Officer Durkee fell in, his face serious. Russ held up a curling sheet of fax paper. “Karen Burns,” he began formally. “I have here a copy of a warrant executed by Judge Ryswick granting us permission to search your cars and to confiscate any firearms in your or your husband’s possession for testing. We are also warranted to search your house for any materials possibly related to the deaths of Katie McWhorter and Darrell McWhorter.” He folded the piece of paper carefully, creasing it with finger and thumb pressed tightly together. “Judge Ryswick thought our new information was sufficient to issue a separate warrant for your husband’s arrest.”

Karen’s posture went rigid, and her arm, still holding the back of the chair, trembled slightly. She made no other sign or sound.

“However, I won’t execute the arrest if Geoff presents himself to the station for questioning within the next two hours. I’ve sent someone to your office to let him know. If he comes home first, of course, we’ll have someone there,” Russ said. “Officer Durkee will accompany you to your vehicle. If you’ll hand over your keys?”

“I want to call my lawyer. Now.”

“There’s a phone at the main desk. Mark, will you escort Mrs. Burns to the phone?”

Karen shot Clare a venomous glance. “Confession and repentance?” Her voice hissed like caustic lye. She turned and swept out of the interview room, Officer Durkee close on her heels.

Clare faced Russ. “This is absolutely outrageous!”

“Stay out of it, Clare.”

“Stay out of it? I’m the one who persuaded her to come in her and tell you the truth! How you can twist that around in order to search her car and her house. . . . Are you going to arrest Geoff Burns?”

“Depends on whether he shows up or not. What he says in the interview. I may very well hold him overnight while we test the gun.”

Clare clenched her teeth to keep her voice from rising. “I brought Karen Burns in here. I persuaded her to come clean with you. I assured her you would listen to her. I thought—”

“No, you didn’t think. You just jumped in feet first without looking where you were going or considering the consequences. I’m a cop, Clare! What the hell did you expect me to do when a woman I suspect is an accessory to two murders walks in and tells me her husband was drunk and unaccounted for during the time Darrell McWhorter was killed? Shake her hand and give her a good citizenship badge? Get real!”

Clare pressed her hands flat against the table to keep them from shaking. “I was trying to help—”

“You were trying to help the Burnses, yeah, I know. And you’re trying to help Kristen McWhorter, and the baby, and the unwed mothers of the world, and every damn soul you come across. That’s why you’re a priest, Clare. I, on the other hand, am a cop. The only thing I’m trying to do is catch the sonofabitch who killed Katie McWhorter and her father and send him to the chair. And I will do anything—anything within the law—if it means getting closer to that arrest.” He spread his legs slightly and hooked his thumbs into his belt, an archetype of law enforcement authority. “If that interferes with your agenda, I’m sorry. But don’t act the outraged innocent with me when I’m doing my job.”

Clare flushed hotly. “You! Can kiss my ass!”

“Oh, very nice. They teach you that in seminary?”

She spun on her heel and stalked out of the room, past an embarrassed-looking Harlene, past the abandoned main desk. Behind her, she could hear Russ’s voice, exasperated, angry. “Clare. Clare!”

She took the stairs two at a time and burst out into the icy night air. She interlaced her fingers tightly and took a deep breath. The cold, dry air made her cough. She clattered down the front steps, almost losing her footing, and swung around the corner into the station parking lot.

Karen was standing next to her Range Rover, arms folded. Officer Durkee was inside, his flashlight bouncing off the windows and mirrors. Karen’s lips pinched together when she saw Clare. “I’m not going to be able to give you a lift back to my place. My vehicle’s going to be out of commission for awhile. And I have to wait for our lawyer to get here.” She glanced at Durkee’s shadowy form. “I’ve asked him to try to get a stay on the warrant.”

“Karen,” Clare began. “I’m so sorry . . .”

The other woman pulled a knit hat from her coat pocket and twisted her hair underneath it. Automatically, she pulled a few loose curls down here and there, framing her face. “I’m sure you are. And I’m sure that when this is all over, I’ll be able to listen to your apology. But right now, I’d rather you just leave me and my husband alone.”

Clare dropped her arms to her sides. She could feel a hot pricking behind her eyes. “Of course. I’m . . . I’m so sorry. I didn’t think . . .” Karen’s scornful look told her it was obvious she hadn’t thought. Clare bobbed her head and left the parking lot as fast as she could, wanting nothing so much as to put the fiasco behind her. What had she been thinking? Her mind drew a blank. She had been dismayed that the Burnses had lied to the police. She had been hopeful that Karen’s confession would finally clear them in the investigation. She had been . . . pleased with herself, bringing a new piece of information to Russ, like some attention-starved dog showing off a trick. She jammed her hands deep into her pockets in disgust. She hadn’t been thinking, just feeling. And reacting.

She stopped at an intersection and waited for cars to pass. Damn, it was cold. Her ears already ached and it was another mile at least to the Burnses house, where her car was parked. Why hadn’t she worn a hat? A stitch in time saves nine, her grandmother said. Proper prior planning prevents piss-poor performance. That voice belonged to the warrant officer who had taught her survival course. They were evidently in agreement with Russ.

The light turned green and she crossed. But, dammit, he was so focused on the Burnses he couldn’t consider any other possibility. Why would Karen have told her about Geoff’s absence the night Darrell was murdered if it wasn’t to exculpate him? It was so obvious! But Russ couldn’t entertain the notion that he might be wrong. Him and his ‘Me cop, you priest’ routine. Patronizing jerk.

The flash of red lights and brief blurp of a siren jerked her attention to the road. A cruiser was pacing her, its passenger-side window unrolled.

“Get in, I’ll drive you.”

“No,” she told the car.

“For God’s sake, Clare, just because you were wrong about the Burnses doesn’t mean you have to sulk like a little kid. It’s a long walk to their house.”

“I can use the exercise.”

“Clare, get in the goddamn car!”

“No.”

“I won’t ask again!”

She remained silent, facing in the direction she was walking, her eyes fixed on the building across the next intersection.

“Fine, dammit. Be that way!” The cruiser picked up speed and drove off.

In the fading rumble of its engine and the accelerating swish swish swish of its tires, she could hear her grandmother Fergusson’s voice. Self-righteousness won’t mend any shoe leather, missy, and pride won’t put a meal on the table. Wrapping her arms and her self-righteousness around her, Clare trudged on into the night.

CHAPTER 21

Weekends were peak time for the Millers Kill Infirmary. Children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, busy from Monday through Friday, would come for visits Saturday and Sunday, bringing magazines, photographs, and potted plants that the staff would labor to keep alive. So far, Clare had kept her visits to weekdays, when the corridors were largely quiet and the oldest members of her congregation were happy to see someone from the outside.

But Mr. Howard’s niece had asked her to stop by to encourage the old gentleman, who had just gotten back to the Infirmary after a rough bout of pneumonia, so here she was, hoping that by showing up first thing in the morning she could avoid the sullen teenagers and guilty-looking adults who populated the corridors on Saturdays.

Mr. Howard looked weak and washed-out but seemed to be in high spirits. Clare had visited with him once before, and found what he most wanted was an audience for his stories of the Great Depression and his never-ending string of dreadful puns. He didn’t acknowledge she was a priest: whether that was from faulty memory or a politely unvoiced disagreement with the ordination of women, she didn’t know. They did pray together at the end of her half-hour visit, though. She wondered, leaving him with a promise to say hello to his niece, if the prayers of a man of ninety were somehow more easily heard by God. After that many years, God must seem like just one more old friend living on the other side of the divide.

At the unmanned nurses’ station, Clare tucked her brown police parka under her arm and flipped through the roster of residents, finding names she knew, reading the brief notes to see if anyone was doing poorly or heading for the hospital. The sound of muffled crying caught her attention. She dropped the notebook and stepped around the counter into the corridor. An old woman dressed in a heavy floor-length robe leaned against the wall, her fist jammed into her mouth, her eyes wide and frightened.

“Hello,” Clare said quietly. “Can I help you?”

“I—I don’t know,” the woman said. She looked about her. “I don’t know where . . .”

Clare held her hand out. “Are you lost? Let me help you find out where your room is.” She tucked the woman’s arm under her own and craned her neck, looking for a nurse or aide.

“Do you know my husband? I’m looking for my husband.” She held tightly to Clare’s arm.

“I don’t work here, I’m just visiting. Let’s find someone who can help us.”

“I’m all runny,” the woman said, touching her eyes. “I need a . . . a . . .”

Clare tugged a tissue out of its box at the nurses’ station. Behind a partial wall, she spotted a door marked DIRECTOR OF NURSING. “Let’s try over here. Can you walk this way with me? That’s great.” She knocked at the door.

Nothing. Clare was about to try the nurses’ station on the next floor when the door opened. “Yes?” a deep voice rumbled. The doorway was filled with an enormous bear of a man, tall, broad, well-padded, luxuriously bearded. His gaze immediately fell onto the woman clinging to Clare. “Oh, Mrs. Ausberger. Did you get lost again, dear?” He draped a massive arm around the frail lady’s shoulders and guided her back to the nurses’ station. He picked up a handset and punched in a number. “Staci? Can you come to three, please? Mrs. Ausberger is here.” There was a pause. “Yes, probably.”

Mrs. Ausberger patted the man’s tweed jacket, visibly calmed by his presence. “Oh, you smell just like my husband. Just like my husband.”

The man grinned sheepishly at Clare. “You two caught me smoking a pipe in my office. I know I’m not supposed to, but I hate going outside to puff away on these cold days. Takes all the pleasure out of it, reminds me that it’s really just a filthy addiction.” He reached out with his right hand. “I’m Paul Foubert. Director of Nursing.”

“Clare Fergusson. I’m the new priest at St. Alban’s.”

“Yep, the collar kind of gives you away. Thanks for rescuing Mrs. Ausberger. She’s been known to wander pretty far afield. Hey, Staci, great.”

A cute young woman barely out of her teens clattered down the corridor. “Sorry, Paul. I was fixing Mrs. Meerkill’s hair in the bathroom and didn’t realize she had slipped out.” She took Mrs. Augsberger’s hand. “C’mon, Mrs. A. How ’bout we get you washed up and I’ll make your hair pretty.”

“My husband likes my hair down.”

“You’re not going to be seeing your husband today, Mrs. A. But your grandson Nicholas will be visiting with his family. Won’t that be nice?” The girl’s cheerful voice faded as the pair turned the corner.

Clare looked up at Paul Foubert. “Her husband?”

“Dead ten years.” They both looked down the empty corridor. Foubert idly slapped his hands against his coat pockets. “Damn. Left my lighter in the office. Why don’t you come in for a minute or two?”

The director of nursing’s office was appropriately den-like in brick and wood. Tall shelves crammed with books and memorabilia lined one wall, facing a collection of obviously amateur artwork, undoubtedly done by residents of the Infirmary. Foubert gestured to one of the comfortable chairs facing his generously cluttered desk before settling himself into a well-sprung leather armchair.

“So, how long have you been at St. Alban’s?”

Clare propped her leg on the opposite knee. “A little over a month. It’s been . . . hectic. I’m still trying to get to the point where I don’t have to have a directory to remember my parishioners’ names and a map spread over my legs when I go out for a drive.”

Foubert picked up a pipe from a lumpy, half-glazed ashtray. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

He tamped in fresh tobacco. “What do you think of our Infirmary?”

“It seems like a good facility. The staff members I’ve met have all been pleasant and helpful. Caring. I imagine the small size helps. I did some work at a nursing home in Virginia while I was at seminary. It was huge. Well-run, but impersonal.”

“Mmmm. I’ve been fortunate to be able to get good people, both staff and volunteers. You’re right, being small does help. Makes it more like family. Before we moved here, I was at a large facility in New York City, and Lord, sometimes it felt like a body warehouse.”

“You’re not from here?”

He lit the pipe. The rich tobacco tang filled the room. “I am, originally. My dad worked in the mill. I escaped to the big city like a lot of kids and didn’t return until I was a burnout case, with nowhere else to go. I’ve been here eight years now.”

Clare glanced at the multiple diplomas hanging on the wall opposite the windows. “Some people would say running a nursing home is a burnout job.”

“Oh, no. Caring for men struck down in the prime of their lives, watching a dozen of your best friends die, that’s burnout.” He waved his pipe toward the rest of the Infirmary. “This is much more peaceful. It’s—you’ll pardon the slightly facist sound of this—the natural order. It’s a privilege to help our oldest through the ends of their lives. I try to impress that on everyone who works here, because I’ve found folks who don’t feel that way tend to get depressed and impatient with our residents.”

Clare nodded. “I’ll consider myself impressed upon.” The diploma wall also held a photo collage that stretched a good three feet square. She could pick out shots of parties and Christmas celebrations, elderly residents surrounded by three and four generations of family, doctors in white lab coats and nurses in cheerful-print smocks. A very large Easter Bunny in one picture turned out to be Foubert himself. She laughed.

“My Hall of Fame. Or Shame, as the case may be.”

“We have a similar one hanging outside our parish hall. But your pictures are definitely more fun than ours.” She opened her mouth soundlessly, struck by a sudden thought. “Are there pictures of all your volunteers here?”

“There sure are. We couldn’t run this place without them. I can’t afford to hire LPNs to do what they’re willing to do for free.”

“You must have a photo of Katie McWhorter, then.”

Foubert’s pleasant expression tightened under his bushy eyebrows. “I read about her in the paper.” He looked down at the pipe in his hand. The tobacco smouldered fragrantly. “She was such a wonderful kid. A little too much on the serious side for her age, but a damn hard worker. And smart.” He shook his head. “What a waste.” He looked up. “You leave the city to get away from that sort of thing, but it’s everywhere nowadays, isn’t it? There isn’t any safe spot anymore.” He rose from behind his desk and hunkered down in front of the collage. “Here she is. This was taken last year, at the Christmas party. She was prettier than she photographed. It was her expression, I think.”

Clare got out of her chair for a better view.

“The residents loved her. She never got antsy around them, the way some of our teenage volunteers do. She liked being here.”

“Who’s the boy with his arm around her? He looks sort of . . . have I seen him here during one of my visits?”

“No, he’s off to college as well. That’s her sweetheart, Wes Fowler. He was another volunteer.” Foubert laughed softly. “They used to take breaks together, go out to his car. Later I’d see them come in all pinked up and grinning. Kids.” His smile faded. “What a waste. What a terrible waste. I remember once when—”

Clare sat back in her chair. Foubert’s voice seemed to come from far away, as if he were on the radio in another room. Her ears buzzed.

Wes Fowler.

What had Doctor Anne’s son said about the boy? Serious, studious, hard working. Just like Katie.

Golden boy. From a family that had everything the McWhorter’s didn’t. The Fowlers three-thousand-square-foot dream home was maybe ten miles from the apartment on Depot Street, but it could just as well have been on the other side of the planet.

A boy who had everything going for him, including an appointment to West Point and a beautiful girlfriend from a family as well-respected as his own. What would a boy like that do to hide a screwup? A really big, life-altering, won’t-go-away-for-the-next-eighteen-years screwup?

Wes Fowler.

The boy Katie didn’t want her family to know about. He evidently felt the same way about keeping it secret.

She was going to have to tell Vaughn Fowler and his wife about this. Oh, God.

“—you’d think, wouldn’t you? Reverend Fergusson?”

“Huh?”

“Are you okay? You look odd.”

“I feel odd. I mean—yes, I’m okay.”

She stood up. Foubert rose with her, clasping one huge paw around her arm. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, thank you.” She smiled at him, a kind of social grimace. “I do need to be going, though. I just remembered something important.”

“Alright, then.” He cradled his pipe in the ashtray. “I wish I knew who to send my condolences to about Katie. She never talked about her family.”

“She has a sister, Kristen. She’s asked me to perform the burial service, as it happens. If you’d like, I’ll let you know when and where. She has to wait until the police, um . . .”

“Yeah. I do. I’d like that, please.” Foubert plucked a business card off his desk and handed it to her.

Hand halfway to her pocket, Clare stopped. “Paul, could I borrow the photograph of Katie? I’ll return it.”

He squatted and peeled the picture off the board, balling up sticky gum between his fingers before giving it to Clare.

“Thank you.”

He opened the office door and ushered her out. “I’ll be hearing from you, then. Stop by the next time you’re visiting, will you?”

“I sure will do that, yes.” She took off with indecent haste. The photograph of the young couple, projections for the cost of the church roof, Karen Burns’s angry face, all jostled for space at the front of her consciousness.

Wes Fowler! My God!

There was a Pathfinder parked next to the Fowler’s Explorer at the top of their long, well-plowed drive. Clare pulled in close behind them and killed her engine. The two hulking SUVs could probably four-wheel-drive straight over her windshield and down the back of her car without noticing more than a little bump. She rested her head on the steering wheel for a moment, reaching for the sense of someone outside her and within her, looking for strength, looking for courage. Asking for the right words to come when she needed them.

Gravel and snow crunched underfoot as she walked up to the side porch. The Fowler’s home was a modern interpretation of a Georgian house, a sweep of white clapboard frequently broken by double-glazed windows with Palladian arches. At some point, the rolling acreage upon which the house sat must have been a farm, but it was all pleasure land now, the pastures used only for cross-country skiing and snowmobiling. Idyllic spot to be a retired gentleman. Pressing on the bell, Clare felt like the angel with the flaming sword, sent to roust the inhabitants out of their Eden.

“Reverend Fergusson! What brings you out here?”

Edith Fowler was a horsy-looking woman whose extreme slenderness was beginning to look bony with age. Her short brown hair was clipped to a sporty, no-nonsense length and she wore pearls and a shetland sweater over a monogrammed turtleneck. Clare pulled her hat off. If someone had been strangled with a shetland sweater from Talbots, she had said to Russ, laughing at the idea of one of her congregants commiting murder.

“Honey? Who is it?” Vaughn Fowler crowded around his wife’s shoulder as she was standing back to let Clare in the door. “Clare. This is an unexpected pleasure.”

Clare stuffed her gloves into the pockets of her oversized parka and pulled it off. “I apologize for intruding, but I needed to speak with you.” Edith Fowler took the coat and hung it in the hall closet. “Both of you.”

The couple looked at each other. “We’re entertaining right now . . .” Edith said hesitantly.

“It shouldn’t take long. It is important.”

Vaughn gestured her through the kitchen door. “Of course.” Inside the kitchen, preparations for a brunch were obviously in progress. Bowls of batter, a carton of eggs, cutting boards of chopped vegetables. And, sipping what looked like mimosas, were the Shatthams. Clare smiled feebly. Great. They were probably getting ready to toast Wes and Alyson’s engagement or something.

The Shatthams greeted her warmly, which made her feel even guiltier for what she was about to lay on the Fowlers. “Clare needs to speak with me and Edith for a few minutes,” Vaughn said. “I know you two can entertain yourselves.”

“Barb, give a quick poke to the sausages, will you?” Edith asked.

“In here’s my study. Right next to the kitchen in case I get a snack attack while working.” Vaughn let Clare and his wife enter the room, then shut the door behind them. The study was a monument to Fowler’s family and military career. Photos and maps and trophies and a few threadbare battalion flags.

“Working?” Clare asked, temporizing the moment of truth.

“On a history of Washington county.” He waved toward a pigeonholed desk, where an electric Remington typewriter sat next to several hardbound books. “It’s going to fill in the gaps other histories leave out.” Clare bent down to examine a black-and-white photograph of a lean young man in fatigues standing next to a general with a whole salad of ribbons on his chest. Both men were squinting into the sun, smiling stiffly.

“Sir. Is that you?”

“With my father. 1965. Day before I shipped to Vietnam.”

“You look just like him.” Clare straightened. Edith Fowler looked at her husband, who cocked his head toward Clare.

“You needed to speak with us about . . .”

She took a deep breath. “Sir . . . Vaughn . . . you recall when Chief Van Alstyne was showing the photographs of the dead girl in the parish hall? You said you’d never seen her before.”

“Of course I remember. That’s not the sort of everyday Sunday you’re likely to forget.”

“We know the girl’s identity now.”

“Yes, I know. Mitch and Barb told us all about it. Alyson identified her as one of her classmates.”

“Yes, sir. Her name was Katie McWhorter.” Clare clasped her hands behind her back. “Did your son ever mention that name?”

Fowler looked at his wife. “No,” she said. “What on earth does this have to do with Wes?”

“Today I discovered your son was seeing Katie McWhorter secretly. They were volunteers at the Infirmary together, as well as being in the same class at the high school. The director of nursing told me he used to see them sneaking off to neck. Whatever it was, it probably started in the fall, when Katie broke up with her boyfriend. It was certainly going on at Christmastime last year.”

“Wait a minute,” Fowler said, turning toward his wife again. “Wasn’t he going out with Alyson last year?”

“Of course he was.” Edith Fowler frowned at Clare. “If you had to speak with us about our son cheating on his girlfriend, Reverend Fergusson, I’m afraid I don’t see the point. Nor do I see that it’s any business of yours.”

Clare bit the tip of her tongue. “Katie McWhorter had a baby just a week or so before she was killed. So far, the police haven’t been able to identify the baby’s father.”

“So far? Are you suggesting—”

“Calm down, Edie. Clare, you don’t know our son. If anything, he’s overly responsible. And devoted to Alyson. Maybe he did have a little romance with this girl, but there’s no way he’d be so thoughtless as to risk a pregnancy.”

“This is ridiculous. How do you know it’s not some other boy anyway?”

“I have a photograph of them taken at the Infirmary Christmas party last year. It’s—” she reached into her pants pockets, coming up with nothing more than a fistful of change and a wadded tissue. “I left it in my coat pocket.” She let her hands drop. “I’m not saying that your son is involved in Katie McWhorter’s murder. I’m suggesting that he may have fathered her child. We know she had a boyfriend that she didn’t want her family to know about. Somebody accompanied her to a local motel around Thanksgiving and stayed with her while she had the baby. She named him Cody, wrote a note asking that he be adopted by Geoff and Karen Burns, and left him on the kitchen steps at St. Alban’s, despite having no connection to the church.” She flipped her hands open. “Don’t you see? Wes had a reason to want to stay anonymous. He was home around Thanksgiving, right?”

Vaughn Fowler nodded.

“And he’s a member of the church. He would have known about the Burnses looking for a child.”

Edith Fowler covered her mouth for a moment. “Oh, dear God. Vaughn, do you think . . . ?”

“I don’t know. It’s a long chain of supposition from just one link.” He looked at the floor, frowning. “Have you been to the police with this, yet?”

“No. Chief Van Alstyne is . . .” she paused, reining in the anger she still felt from yesterday. “. . . anxious to find the killer. He’s been frustrated so far, and he’s pouncing on possibilities without giving them much thought.” Had Geoff Burns been arrested yet? Not that Karen would call and tell her. “I’m afraid that if he hears about the connection between Wes and Katie, he’ll leap straight to the conclusion that Wes murdered her. And probably Darrell McWhorter as well.” Darrell had looked at the parish bulletin board before changing his mind about giving Cody to the Burnses. He had seen Wes’s picture there, with his family. And made a phone call that afternoon. “Does Wes have access to any money?” she asked.

“What?”

“Certainly. He has an account with a bank in West Point.”

“Sorry, I was just thinking.” A scared kid with his own cash made an easy target for blackmail. She glanced at Mrs. Fowler, leaning against her husband. Maybe their son was a murderer. One way or another, though, she was going to make damn sure she had gathered some evidence before handing the boy over to Russ’s tender mercies. “Let me check this out some before we involve the police,” she said.

Vaughn nodded. “I want Wes here to answer questions.” He looked at his watch. “I can head for West Point later this afternoon and bring him back tomorrow morning first thing.”

“Good. I’m going down to Albany. Katie’s sister gave me the address yesterday. I’ll talk to Katie’s housemates, and see what they remember. Do you have a picture of Wes I could borrow?” She looked around the room. All the family photos were framed and hanging on the walls.

“Here, take this.” Edith Fowler grabbed a large bound volume off the coffee table. “It’s his high school yearbook.”

“Thank you. I—”

“I’d like to see that photograph you have,” Edith went on. “Just to make sure there’s no mix-up.”

“Of course.”

Vaughn opened the door. In the kitchen, the Shatthams were intently poring over cookbooks. Clare wondered how soundproof the study door was.

“All set. We’ll just see Reverend Fergusson out.”

In the hall foyer, Edith handed Clare her coat. “Thank you. It’s—” Clare yanked her gloves from the pocket and dug inside. “—right here.”

The Fowlers examined the Polaroid. Edith made a soft noise.

“It’s him, all right,” Vaughn said, his voice gravelly. “I’ll get him on the phone right away. I want to get to the bottom of this.” He shook his head. “May we keep this?”

Clare reached for the picture. “I’d like to take it with me to Albany. I hope it’s nothing, but it may need to go to the police.” She deposited it back into her pocket.

There was a noise from the kitchen entrance. “We wanted to say good-bye,” Mitchell Shattham said hesitantly.

“Edie, are you all right?” his wife asked. Edith Fowler shook her head.

“We’ll want to get in touch with you as soon as you’re back from Albany,” Vaughn said.

“I’ll stop by my office. You can leave me a message and I’ll call you from there.” She tucked the yearbook under her arm and shook hands with the Fowlers. “I’m sorry to lay all this on you this morning. I sincerely hope I’m wrong.” She waved to the Shatthams as she stepped off the porch. Before the door closed, she could see Barbara Shattham embracing Edith Fowler.

In her car, Clare let her head drop back against the headrest and closed her eyes, boneless. She opened them again. Through steel and glass, she could hear the familiar flat pulsing of rotors. She pressed her face against the chilly window. There it was, at maybe eight hundred feet, flying northwest. Maybe a skiing trip. She squinted. Looked like a Bell AH-51. Good ship, fast, reliable. Before she left Virginia, she had been trying to talk her dad into replacing his old OH-50.

Shifting, she flipped open the glove compartment and flicked through the maps there. Eastern New York State, with a city map of Albany. She folded the heavy paper into a manageable size and started the engine. She could see the helicopter in the passenger-side window now. As she watched, unable to look away, it heeled its tail rotor up, accelerating toward the Adirondacks. She rubbed a gloved hand over her dry lips. God. She wished she were up there right now.

CHAPTER 22

Emily Colbaum was a tiny, fey girl with huge brown eyes and a close-cropped haircut that looked like Audrey Hepburn on speed. She stood in the doorway of the room she had once shared with Katie McWhorter, crossing and uncrossing her arms. “You see, Reverend? I mean, I’m not a complete slob, but it would be hard to know what went missing.”

Clare crawled backwards from underneath Katie’s bed. “I’m really not so concerned about what the man took. I was hoping maybe there was something left behind. A photograph, a note from a phone message . . . something.” She grunted in frustration as she clambered to her feet.

“The cops were pretty thorough. Of course, I think they were thinking, like, drugs, or something bad like that, like the only thing that could get a girl killed was either a rapist or being mixed up in something bad.” Emily crossed her arms around herself again. “Katie wasn’t like that.”

“I know.” Clare sat on the bed that had been Katie’s. The posters on her half of the room ran heavily to cute kittens with inspirational sayings and landscapes with greeting-card poetry. There was nothing hinting of a secret life in her messy desk and overstuffed bookcase. Clare brushed a piece of a dust bunny off her nose. She was eighteen, and pregnant. Let’s say by Wes Fowler. She didn’t want anyone to know. Why?

“Emily, did Katie ever talk about what she wanted to do after college?”

“Oh, sure. She wanted to get into computers. Maybe Web designing, SYSOP, she had lots of ideas. She wanted her own business, to work for herself. She could have done it, too. She was just amazingly hardworking. She was like, never partying or blowing off class.”

“So getting married or having children right away wasn’t in her plan.”

“No way. I couldn’t believe it when they told me she’d had a baby. I just couldn’t believe it.”

“Hey, who’s here?” A black girl trailing layers of knitwear sidled around Emily into the room. She had multiple earrings and a small stud set in one nostril. “Hi, I’m Ebony.”

“Ebony rooms with Sara, across the hall.”

“Yeah, the room where you don’t have to listen to that nasty dog next door.”

“Yeah, but you get the street lamp all night long. This is Reverend Clare, from Katie’s hometown. She’s kind of helping Katie’s sister.”

“Hi, Ebony.” Clare rose and shook the girl’s hand. “I have a picture I already showed Emily, of Katie with a boy. I think he might be the father of her baby.” She dug into her pants pocket, grateful she was wearing off-duty khakis and a wool turtleneck instead of her usual garb. “Have you ever seen him?”

Ebony studied the photograph. She shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t think I ever saw any guy with Katie, you know? She was . . . focused. She wanted to hit the ground running.”

“I was telling the Rev how I was, like, in disbelief when I heard she had had a baby.”

“Oh, yeah,” Ebony agreed, handing the photo back to Clare. “I thought she was just putting on weight. We all were complaining about the food, and the freshman fifteen and all that stuff. Most of us eat at the dining halls, and man, that stuff is nasty for your figure.”

“I remember,” Clare said, smiling a little. “Look, I left a yearbook from Katie’s high school downstairs. There are some more pictures of the boy—his name is Wes. Did she ever mention that name?”

Ebony and Emily looked at each other.

“You ever hear that?”

“Nope.”

“Me, neither.”

“Would you take a look at the yearbook? Just in case?”

The living room of the group house was cheerfully ramshackle, furnished with someone’s old family-room sofa, crate-style and director’s chairs, an elaborately carved coffee table that had been the height of Mediterranean chic in 1972, and the ubiquitous cinder-block-and-board shelving. The girls sat on the sofa together. Clare retrieved the yearbook from the coffee table.

“This is his senior picture.” Wes was a good-looking boy, square-jawed and athletic, a young version of his father.

“What is this, skinhead hair?”

“No, he’s in the U.S. Military Academy.”

“And he got an early start on the buzzcut thing. No, I’ve never seen this guy.” Ebony leafed through a few pages. “Here’s Katie.” She read the script below the photograph. “ ‘SUNY Albany. Favorite memory of MKHS, the junior trip car wash fund-raiser, and Mr. Delogue’s class. Quote: I think I can, I think I can.’ ” She flipped through a few more pages. “Man, I knew she came from a small town. Look at these folks. What’s the matter, they don’t allow black people in Millers Kill?”

“Ebony!” Emily squealed.

Clare smiled crookedly. “Let’s just say that diversity is not their strong suit.”

“No lie. Hey, Em. Isn’t this that girl who came to see Katie at the beginning of the year?”

“What? Who?” Clare leaned over the coffee table to see.

“This blonde copping an attitude. Remember her, Em?”

On a page of candid photographs, Ebony had one finger squarely on a Seventeen magazine blonde with perfect skin and a form-fitting tie-dyed dress.

“Alyson Shattham was here visiting Katie?” Clare blinked in disbelief.

“It wasn’t like, a social call.” Emily said. “She was a bitch on wheels.”

“She had some sort of problem with Katie. Actually, she had a problem with all of us. Acted like her shit didn’t smell.” Ebony looked at Clare, biting her lip. “Oh. Sorry, Reverend. I forgot.”

“That’s okay. Tell me what you remember about Alyson’s visit.”

“She wanted to speak with Katie. She was, like, very rude. They went into the kitchen to talk and shut the door.”

“She was definitely riding Katie. But Katie, she could hold her own. I don’t know what they went on about while they were in the kitchen, but blondie flounced out of here like somebody had caught her tail in a crack.”

“Did Katie ever tell you what they talked about?”

“No. She was, like, very private with stuff bothering her. She would smile and change the subject if you asked if she was okay. Like, she didn’t want to burden anybody.”

Ebony nodded in agreement.

“Did either of you ever see Alyson here again? Or did Katie mention she saw her again?”

Ebony and Emily looked at each other.

“You ever see her after that time?”

“Nope.”

“Me, neither.”

Clare stood up straight and rubbed her forefinger across her lips. Alyson Shattham. Now that was interesting.

Clare picked up the yearbook. “I think I’ll show this around at the computer center where Katie worked. Maybe someone there overheard her or saw her with either Wes or Alyson.” She glanced out the window. “Then I’d better head back home. I don’t want to get caught in any more of this upstate weather. I have a friend who doesn’t trust my car in the snow.”

Clare checked her rearview mirror, changed lanes, and wedged her soda between her thighs. She adjusted the radio tuner as an eighteen-wheeler passed her. Traffic was light on the Northway this Saturday afternoon.

“WNCR’s accu-weather update!” the speakers blared. She turned the volume down. “A low pressure system continues to move in fast from the northeast,” the announcer said portentously. “I’m looking for snow to start mid-afternoon, with temperatures falling into the single digits by nightfall and increasing storm intensity. Accumulations from four to six inches along the Hudson Valley areas, higher in the mountains. Get out those skis if you haven’t already, because it’s prime time at the peaks!” The weather report broke for an ad extolling snowboarding at Hidden Valley Ski Area.

“Wonderful,” Clare muttered. She ate a few more french fries. She was a long way from being able to “smell snow” as Russ claimed he could do, but even she could tell the lead-gray clouds darkening the sky to the north meant another snowstorm. Didn’t it ever stop snowing up here?

“Is it my imagination, or is this a really snowy December?” the DJ asked.

“It’s not your imagination, Lisa, this is the third snowiest December since 1957,” the smooth-voiced weatherman said. “And with the storms now forming over the Rockies and the Canadian plains, we may set a new record before the month is over.”

Clare groaned.

“So get out and get that Christmas shopping done before you’re stuck indoors waiting for the plows, right, Dave?”

“That’s right, Lisa!”

“Let’s have something seasonal, then!”

Harry Connick, Jr.’s voice filled the car. “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas . . .” Clare picked her bacon burger off the yearbook cover. She might as well have left Albany right after talking with Emily and Ebony, instead of waiting until the afternoon, risking driving into the storm. No one at the university’s computer center could recall seeing Katie with Wes or Alyson.

She chewed her rapidly cooling burger thoughtfully. Alyson had lied straight out to her, Russ, and her parents. Maybe Wes had thrown her over for Katie. Could she have murdered in a fit of jealousy? What could she have said to have lured Katie back to Millers Kill? Had she found out about the baby, somehow?

Keeping her eyes on the highway, Clare groped for a napkin and wiped her mouth. She found it easy to think the worst of Alyson. Something about that girl got under her skin. Who would have guessed she still had unresolved issues from her high-school days as an ugly duckling? She frowned. Maybe Alyson and Wes both did it, like that high-school couple out in Texas, who had murdered a girl who threatened their romance.

She sighed. She was going to have to call Russ and tell him everything she’d found out. The convoluted strands of this case twisted around like bad wiring, an offense to her pilot’s sense of order. Maybe he had been right to jump on the Burnses. Not because they had been guilty, but because trying to put together the events of the crime with only pieces of motivation and insight into the human heart was hopeless. Real, physical evidence, that’s what pointed the finger at the guilty. Besides, how was she going to get Alyson to talk to her? Russ was . . . was . . . not entirely right. But he was a little right when he told her to leave it to the professionals. Although if he thought she was going to admit that over the phone, he had another think coming.

She pulled into the tiny parking area behind St. Alban’s an hour or so before sunset, grateful to have beaten out the storm. She had no illusions about her winter driving skills. She unlocked the back door and made her way up to her office, pausing to plug in the coffeemaker. Lois must have turned down the thermostat when she left at noon, since the parish hall was even colder than usual. Clare could up the setting by a few degrees, but her first good look at the yearly oil bills a few days ago had shown her exactly why the church was rarely warmer than 62 degrees, even in the coldest weather. She sighed. Mr. Hadley would be in at 5:30 tomorrow morning to turn the heat up before the services. She could tough it out for a few hours this afternoon.

She carried her coffee into her office. As if in answer to her virtuous intentions, there was an iron carrier overflowing with split logs and a basket of kindling next to the fireplace. “Mr. Hadley!” she said. “You dear, sweet man!”

She had once read that a fire actually takes warm air out of a room, but you couldn’t prove it by her. With flames popping the logs and the iron fire-back radiating heat, she finally felt warm enough to take off her parka. Reaching for the phone, she shook her head in bemusement. Computers and cell phones and nuclear power and space shuttles, and here she was, heating herself like a curate in a Dickens novel.

“Millers Kill Police. May I help you?”

“Harlene? It’s Clare Fergusson. Is the chief in?”

“He sure isn’t, Clare. But I know he’s been trying to get ahold of you. I expect him back within an hour or so. Want to leave a message?”

“He’s been trying to reach me? Okay. Yes . . . tell him I called, and that I’ll be here at my office for a couple of hours. I need to speak with him about Katie McWhorter’s case.”

“I’ll do that. Have a good one.”

“Thanks, Harlene. You, too.”

She clunked down the receiver. Tapped a pencil against her lips. May as well get the messages and start returning calls. Maybe the Fowlers had spoken to Wes and persuaded him to tell the truth about his relationship with Katie. And there was Alyson to consider. It was probably a bad idea to talk with the Shatthams before she heard back from Russ.

She retraced her steps to the main office and pressed the messages button on Lois’s phone. The first message was from Russ. “Just calling to see how everything’s going. Give me a call when you get in.” The second was someone asking about early-morning services, the third was from the Cutlers, wanting to know their pledge balance. The forth and fifth were also from Russ. “I’ve tried calling your home. Are you out, or what? Give me a call when you get this, will you?” The last message was from Edith Fowler. “Reverend Clare? Vaughn and I spoke briefly with Wes this morning. I don’t want to go into it over the machine, I’m sure you’ll understand. Vaughn called the Commandant and has permission to pick up Wes for the rest of the weekend. If the driving’s not too bad, they’ll be back late tonight, otherwise he’ll stay over and they’ll return tomorrow. Can we all meet tomorrow afternoon? Let me know. 555-1903.”

Six or seven pink memo slips poked out of her mail cubbie on the wall. She squinted against the growing dimness in the hall, reading them on the way back to her room. Inquiry about a christening. Possible new members. Sterling Sumner wants another meeting about the boiler. Chief Van Alstyne called, no message.

Kristen McWhorter called, left no return number. Most urgent, underscored by Lois’s confident pen. Has info re: who killed her father. She and mother are hiding out—here Lois had made a big, black question mark and exclamation—at cousin’s hunting cabin. Please come at once. Mother does not trust police. The detailed directions to the cabin covered the rest of the pink slip and continued onto another.

“Lois!” Clare said to her fireplace. “Couldn’t you put the ‘most urgent’ one on top? Holy cow.” Too many years as a church secretary undoubtedly gave a person a jaundiced view of others’ emergencies. She took a quick gulp of coffee and donned the police parka. She really did need to get her own someday soon. She stuffed the directions into her pocket and pulled on her gloves. Kristen’s call had come in just at noon, three and a half hours ago. She must be frantic by now.

Outside, snow was showering down in tiny, dry flakes, freckling her cheeks and nose as she brushed off her windshield. There wasn’t that much accumulation yet. If it took her less than an hour to reach the cabin, she shouldn’t have too much difficulty with the roads. The MG’s engine roared to life reassuringly. Of course, she might not be able to get back out until the storm finished up. She used the last napkin to wipe the melted snow off her face. When she had been young and romantic, she had fantasized about being snowbound in a rustic cabin. But she had for sure never pictured Brenda McWhorter in there with her.

Route 9 North was well-trafficked and easy to drive, even though the plows hadn’t been out yet. She exited near Lake Lucerne and took River Road south. To her left, the Hudson River ran high and fast, carrying away clots of snow and ice in its gray waters. Far fewer cars kept her company here. Snakes of snow slithered across the road, obscuring the macadam. She glanced at her directions. The right onto Tenant Mountain Road turned her due west, but there was no sign of impending sunset behind the hills ascending in front of her, only an iron shell of sky and the snow, falling faster and harder against her windshield. Infrequently, she passed houses, their lights glowing through the swirling flakes like figures inside glass snow globes. Beautiful and unreachable. The sense of isolation pricked at her. Skittered. She turned the radio up for its illusion of company.

She spotted Alan’s Gas and Grocery, the landmark mentioned in her directions. From here it was two miles to the road leading directly up into the mountains. It was a small general store with lighted signs blazing cheerfully if commercially through the storm. COCA COLA! BUDWEISER! DIESEL, $1.00! She almost pulled over. It would be dry and safe, there would be a phone, she could admit she was too inexperienced to be driving in this weather and call—who? One of the congregation? A taxi?

She gritted her teeth. Russ was the only person she considered enough of a friend to ask for a favor like that. She drove past the entrance to the grocery’s tiny parking lot. How could she come begging for a ride like a stranded teenager after yesterday? She blew out a gusty breath. Her inexperience at winter driving, and the unfamiliar landscape, were making her jittery. If she calmed down, drove carefully, and didn’t run scared to the nearest big, strong man to save her, she’d be fine. Alan’s Gas and Grocery disappeared from her rearview mirror. Two miles to the turnoff. Six miles to the camp road. Less than a mile to the cabin. Even if she had to drop down from her current speed of thirty miles an hour, it shouldn’t take her more than twenty minutes. Then she would whap Kristen upside the head for not leaving a phone number where she could be reached.

She slowed as she hit the two-mile mark. Her headlights shone blurrily through the gathering dark, their edges softened by the snowfall, their light swallowed up in the storm. Two large stone cairns marked the otherwise signless road. Hidden under white, they looked like lean and misshapen snowmen, and she was suddenly sorry she had thought Mrs. McDonald’s plastic snowmen were tacky. On a night like this, they would be beacons of hospitality, marking the boundary between safety and the storm.

She set the trip odometer to zero, turned, fishtailed, over-compensated, then recovered. The MG pulled steadily along the line of ascent. The trees closed in heavily, shrouding the road, giving some protection against the full force of the snowfall. The twilight turned the sky, the air, the snow shades of underwater blue, as if she were piloting through a drowned world. She downshifted, and the engine growled as her tires churned through the light, dry snow. The headlights picked out a few well-covered tracks, but no one had driven through recently enough to compact the snow, which made it easier for her front wheels to get the traction she needed.

The road wound its way up the mountain, never stretching more than a few car-lengths before disappearing around another bend. There was still light enough to clearly see the outlines of the culverts on either side and Clare kept her speed to a steady twenty-five miles an hour, grateful she wasn’t trying to navigate the twisty turns in total darkness. She passed an opening in the trees and realized it must be another camp road. She bit her lip. Kristen had better have been dead-on accurate about the miles to the turnoff, or she was going to be lost but good on this God-forsaken road.

Rounding the next bend, she saw twin lights, small and bright as halogen bulbs, windshield-high in the middle of the road. She slammed on the brakes at the same moment the lights resolved themselves into eyes and her car skidded past harmlessly as a buck bounded off the road into the cover of the brush. She swore out loud for the first time in three weeks and it felt so good she continued to rain down curses on every deer in New York State as she coaxed her car into a straight line and slowly, slowly accelerated.

A mile up the mountain, there was another narrow, unmarked road, barely visible through the encroaching trees. Unplowed, of course. She was beginning to worry about getting through the camp road to Kristen’s cousin’s cabin. The snow was piling higher with every minute, deep enough to seriously impede her car, deep enough to make the mile walk an unthinkable misery in her lightweight boots. She turned off the radio, the better to hear the sound of her tires slurring through snow. She would just have to chance making it as far as she could toward the cabin, and if she got stuck, she would lay on the horn until Kristen came. Let her bear the burden of finding some decent footwear for slogging through the rest of the way.

The trip odometer crawled toward the six-mile mark. She speeded up the wipers, peering through the curtain of snow for the entrance to the camp road. The light had leached almost entirely away by now. She tried switching her high-beams on, but the dizzying flurry of snowflakes through the field of light and the reflected glare from the snow on the road was disorienting.

Up ahead there was a gap in the wall of trees. She slowed, and unrolled her window for a better look. It was hard to tell, but the faint depressions under the new-fallen snow seemed to be tire tracks from earlier in the day. She rolled the window back up and carefully turned onto the camp road.

Thankfully, it sloped downhill in a gentle, hillside hugging curve. Nothing requiring agile maneuvering from the already-overtaxed car. She glanced at the odometer. Almost there, although between the watery blue darkness and the screen of trees and brush and the snow, she could probably drive into the front door before spotting it. Ahead, the road rose along a lengthy, uneven incline. She groaned. On a clear fall day, that hill would be nothing but a pleasant surge under her tires and the fun of watching the leaves scatter. Now . . .

She clutched the steering wheel more firmly, downshifted again, and stepped on the gas. Hard. The back end shimmied, then lurched forward, pulling hard. Clare leaned toward the windshield, as if shifting her body weight could tip the balance in favor of an uphill climb. The engine keened.

“Come on. Come on,” Clare hissed between gritted teeth. The car crept upward. “Almost there, almost there . . .” She tromped down on the gas pedal a final time, laughing in triumph as the front wheels dug in, held, and hauled her over the crest of the hill. She instantly surged downhill, the car twisting violently to the left, as if the roadbed were half eaten away. The steering wheel nearly jerked from her grasp. Clare yanked her foot off the gas and slammed on her brakes. The front wheels locked. She skidded downhill, the car swinging sideways, tipping. Clare fought for control, pumping the brakes, steering out of the high-velocity skid.

She shrieked involuntarily as the car’s undercarriage slammed into something low and hard, then shrieked again, louder and longer, as she tipped for real this time, crashing and bouncing and crunching over and over.

CHAPTER 23

Stillness and dark. She heaved for air, shuddering gasps sounding abnormally loud in the silent aftermath. She hung from her shoulder belt, her left arm pressing against shattered glass and smeared snow. Her car had come to rest on its side. The remains of the driver’s side window showed slaggy rock. The windshield was intact, but half popped out of its rubber and chrome frame. Above her, like some crazy-cracked skylight, what had been the passenger-side window was slowly whiting out under the falling snow.

She breathed in deeper and more deeply, feeling for pain in her lungs or ribs. She shifted her legs carefully. Her knees felt like someone had been hammering on them, but all her joints moved and nothing seemed to be grinding or poking out. She reached for the door handle above her. Something twinged nastily in her side. Her gloved hand came short. She swallowed. She had to get out of the car. Hitching her hip up, she fumbled at her seatbelt latch. As she slowly shifted her weight, leading headfirst toward the passenger-side door, the car shivered. Metal screeched. Clare flung herself against the seats, clinging to the leather while the vehicle slid downward another half-foot, stopping with a kidney-bruising crunch. She was canted at an easier angle now, some of the car’s weight resting on its upslope side. She pulled at the passenger door latch. It stuck. She braced her boots on the remains of the driver’s door and yanked at the latch again, hunching over and throwing her shoulder against the door at the same time. It popped open with the scrape of metal against raw metal. Clare scrambled out.

She balanced unsteadily on a steep field of boulders and jagged rock, halfway down a crevasse that cut through the mountain as far as she could see upslope and down. Five or six yards beneath her it bottomed out in a wide stream, whose black waters ran fast enough to have kept it from icing over despite the past three days of below-freezing temperatures. Above her, the camp road slanted down to two blocky cement pilings and then vanished into thin air. Her car had gouged a scar along the snow, the pilings, the rubble, and scree. Reluctantly, she looked at the MG. She made a small noise in the back of her throat, resolutely turned away, and picked her way uphill slowly, testing each foothold as she climbed. When she reached the cement pilings, she propped her backside against one and rubbed her knees vigorously. Across the gorge, there might have been twin pilings underneath the unmarked snow. Hard to tell. There was certainly more road there. She could see the cleared width of it between the trees. A bridge had been here. Once.

Clare stamped her feet, knocking away some of the snow clinging to her boots. If there was a cabin in the woods over there, no one had gotten to it by this road. Which meant either the directions got garbled between Kristen and Lois, or she had taken a wrong turn somewhere, or . . . she looked again at where the road simply vanished. Or someone had sent her here. Deliberately. The thought made her stomach clench and her skin prickle coldly.

She pushed herself away from the piling and hiked the rest of the way up to the crest of the road. Whichever it was, mistake or malice, she was in a bad way. She was close to ten miles away from the last outpost of civilization she’d seen, and although her parka and sweater were keeping her upper body warm, she could already feel goose bumps beneath her cotton khakis. Her boots were a bigger problem. Even with heavy woolen socks, her toes ached with cold. How would she feel after one mile in the snow? After five? At what point would she stop hurting and start permanently damaging her flesh?

She pulled the parka hood up and tied it under her chin. The fake fur edging tickled her cheeks. Normally, she could walk a mile easy in fifteen minutes. She started down the road, stepping inside the rapidly filling tire tracks. Fresh snow, packed snow, uneven terrain—say it would take half again as long to go a mile. Twenty-two minutes or so.

Her heel came down on something slippery and loose. She skidded, flailed, and landed hard on her backside, grunting. She picked herself up, beating snow off her pants. Make that twenty-two minutes plus time to fall down and get back up again.

At the side of the road, a dead branch was wedged between the fork of a tree. Clare yanked it loose. It was straight and spar-like, thin enough for her to grasp in one hand and long enough to test the depth of snow a few feet ahead of her. She knocked off the snow crusting its bark and continued on, bracing her steps with the stick.

All right. Ten miles to Alan’s Gas and Grocery would take her four to five hours. What about another cabin? She could hike down the mountain until she reached the closest camp road. She had passed one two or three miles before reaching her turnoff. If it was another mile to a cabin it would still be less than half the distance to the store. She could have shelter. Blankets. Probably a fireplace. Maybe even, God willing, a working telephone.

Snow collected on her cheeks and chin. She scrubbed her face with her glove, trying to dry her skin as much as possible. Not heading straight for the Gas and Grocery would be risky, of course. If she couldn’t find a place within a mile of the main road, she would have to retrace her steps. She pulled the parka sleeve away from her wrist and lit up her watch. Almost five o’clock. By the time she reached the next camp road, it would be full dark. Could she trust herself to stay on a narrow, unplowed road at night with a heavy snow falling? Already the underwater blueness was thickening, making distance impossible to judge, swallowing the details of the forest only a few yards away.

The thought she had been pushing aside crystalized, unavoidable. I could die out here. Her stomach lurched as if she’d dropped a thousand feet of altitude in a few seconds. She could become just one more missing person, her whereabouts a mystery to her family and friends, until some autumn day who-knew-how-many-years in the future, when hunters stumbled over her bones wrapped in a Millers Kill police parka.

“God,” she said, her voice very small in the immense quiet of the woods, “I don’t want to die. Please help me.”

She poked her walking stick into a particularly deep depression one of her tires had spun into the snow. There didn’t seem to be much more she could add to that prayer, unless it was, “and let me find the so-and-so who sent me directions to this place so I can throttle him or her.” No, that wouldn’t do.

She braced and stepped, braced and stepped. The 139th Psalm. It had been a dim twilight, like this one, the sky dark with rain instead of lit by snow. She had been sitting by Grace’s bedside, her sister’s hand resting weightlessly in hers because it hurt Grace to be touched firmly. Their father had read the 139th Psalm in his deep, soft voice. “If I say, surely, the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee, but the night shineth as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to thee.” It had been the last time they had all been together. In the silence and the dark, so far from where Grace had lived and died, she felt an urgent closeness to her sister, a moment of absolute certainty that death was just a pocket-trick, that the dead were all around her, supporting her, giving her strength, pricking her with warnings to watch the road, watch the road—

A dark shape emerged from the bend in the road before her.

Clare blinked. Her heart thumped once, hard. She tightened her grip on her walking stick, wondering, even as she halted in her tracks, muscles tensing, why she wasn’t running forward.

The bulky figure moved ahead another step. It was a person in a jumpsuit, one of those allover padded things they wore snowmobiling around here. Clare eased a fraction and opened her mouth to speak when a flashlight beam suddenly speared her.

“Take off your coat,” a voice hissed.

Clare squinted, dazzled by the sudden light, trying to make sense out of this bizarre sequence of events.

“What?”

“Off!” The voice was guttural, deep, like a man’s, but as unidentifiable as the figure behind it. The flashlight beam dipped low, as if the person had shifted it in his grasp, and Clare heard the distinctive sound of a round being chambered in an automatic pistol.

Her throat closed. Heat surged through her body. She hurled her walking stick as hard as she could toward the flashlight and dove headfirst for the brush at the side of the road.

The gun went off, shattering the stillness like an axe through thin ice, dwarfing a strangled scream of “Goddamnit!” A trio of deer exploded from a thicket of trees, careening into the camp road, the beating of their hooves echoed by wings everywhere overhead, winter birds fleeing in terror.

Sprawled beneath a fir tree, Clare saw the flashlight beam arch crazily into the sky and took off, scrambling hand and foot downslope, away from the sounds of thrashing and swearing. She made it to her feet and ran a yard, two yards, three, before tripping over something buried in the snow and tumbling. She kept her momentum going, rolling forward, regaining her footing, dodging ancient oaks and dense, matted stands of fir, steadying herself on deadwood and saplings. Branches whipped her face. She changed direction, ran until she fell, pawed the snow from her face and shifted direction again. A long-thorned bush scratched and caught at her parka. She plunged through snow up to her thighs, hauled up a slide of scree and branches, her heart pounding and her breath sawing in her ears as loud as jet exhaust.

At a slight rise, she climbed a toppled pine tree and stood, gasping, to get her bearings. She couldn’t see any light from where she had come. Where she thought she had come from. She shook her head, disoriented. If, as she thought, her attacker had dropped his flashlight, as soon as he found it he’d be on her trail. Her all-too-obvious trail. She gulped air, turning away from where she’d been, staking out the lay of the land ahead. Somewhere to her left, hopefully not too far, was the mountain road. If she lost that, she was dead, whether the shadowy man in the snowmobile suit caught up with her or not.

She struck out for where she thought the road must be at a diagonal, picking her route more slowly and carefully, jumping from treefall to treefall and squeezing under the thick shelter of hemlocks and firs whenever possible. She couldn’t leave a clean trail, but she could put breaks in it, make it hard to follow, slow him down.

If she went straight for the road, it would only make it easier for him to catch her. Even if she could manage to run in the slippery snow, he must have a vehicle somewhere, not too far from where he ran into her, near the junction of the camp road and the mountain road.

He had a gun. He had a flashlight, was dressed for the environment, was bigger and probably heavier than she was. He wanted her dead.

She had . . . a branch of feathery needles whacked Clare in the face. She spat out the taste of pine tar. She had a head start. She would be able to see his flashlight a long way before he saw her. Her night vision would be sharper, not relying on artificial light. He was carrying something small-caliber, without much stopping power, so he’d have to get right in close to her in order to drop her. And one other advantage: he had underestimated her, and chances were he’d keep on underestimating her. Her survival school instructor at Egeland AFB, a shiny-headed old warrant officer nicknamed “Hardball” for obvious reasons, told them, “Biggest advantage any woman’s got in an escape and evasion situation is the fact that ninety-nine percent of the men she runs into won’t look past the fact she’s a girl! So don’t use your tits for brains!” The first time she had given up in an exercise, he made her do push-ups in the mucky Florida swamp water until she threw up. She had never surrendered again.

She could use some Florida heat right now. Her feet felt like they were being squeezed in an icy vise. She paused near an old hemlock, its trunk studded with dozens of branches starting only a few feet from the ground. She looked up, the snow pelting her eyelashes, blinking furiously. Time for her to locate an ambush site. The only way out of this forest now would be over the body of the man hunting her.

She went up the tree hand over foot, showering down snow and the odd abandoned nest. Small branches broke against her arms, smearing her coat with gummy pine tar. She climbed as high as she could, until the tree trunk shivered beneath her weight, and bent back a heavily needled branch to take in the view.

Through the murky underlight, too close for comfort, she could see the bobbing and twitching of a flashlight. Her St. Elmo’s Fire, heralding death and disaster. She shifted another branch, straining to see through the snow and the darkness. She needed to find high ground. Someplace she could lure him up to, bringing him to her, letting him tire himself out.

To her right, at a distance impossible to judge in the gloom, a series of steep little hillocks rose from the general downward slope of the mountain. It would mean heading away from the road, which was a disadvantage, but there were thickets of evergreens mixed in with the birch and maples, perfect for what she had in mind. She clung to the hemlock trunk and swiveled around. If she were quick enough, she could backtrack to the small ridge she had stumbled over and make her trail from there, something big and obvious to lead him to the ambush. And her real route . . . she squinted, willing in that moment to trade a year’s pay for a single set of binoculars. The last hillock was cut by a darker gash. She followed it as far as she could with her eyes. It looked as if it might be part of the crevasse that had taken her car. Running water would explain the little hills, harder stone rising from the softer earth of the mountain, eroded away each spring.

She bit her lip. The crevasse it would be. She descended from the hemlock gracelessly, crashing and dropping as fast as possible. If her assailant caught her out in the open, all the clever plans in the world wouldn’t amount to a snowball in hell. She retraced her trail to the spot beneath the lip of a ridge where she had stumbled and fallen. From the well-thrashed disturbance in the snow, she set out for her ambush site, trotting in a fast, low shuffle that left a clear path plowed through the snow. She took the most direct route possible, avoiding any cover, arrowing straight for the thickest clump of fir trees at the edge of the first small hill.

It would look, she hoped, as if she had seen a potential hide and bolted. She turned and shuffled back the fifty yards or so to the ridge, more slowly, careful not to stray outside the path she had laid down. She was damp with sweat under her parka, her heart rattling the cage of her ribs from exertion and fear. Back at her starting point, she picked her way downhill, stepping on fallen branches as much as possible, swinging around tree trunks to conceal her footprints from her hunter’s view. She wanted him to see nothing but the dense clumps of evergreens, see that she would have picked it as a good hidey-hole, see there were more places to huddle unseen at the top of the hill, where a frightened woman could crouch and pray to be overlooked.

From behind her, she heard a noise. She froze, crouching, her gloved hands folded against her mouth to still her breathing. It came again, a crackling. Then a scrape. She fought the urge to close her eyes like a little kid, hiding from the monsters’ sight by refusing to see. There was a rushing, a clap of air, and from the corner of her eye she saw a snowy owl take wing. Her lungs wrung every ounce of oxygen from her body. For a second, she couldn’t move while she tried to remember how to breathe.

She headed downhill again, moving faster as she got farther away from her starting point at the ridge, risking obvious footprints in order to gain time.

She hit the crevasse unexpectedly and nearly went headfirst to the bottom when she fell short of the rocky outcrop she had picked for her next foothold. She slid belly-down a few uncomfortable yards before hooking onto an exposed root, breaking her fall. She grimaced at the wide trail she had left. Just like her car. She would simply have to hope he wouldn’t track her this way, because she was committed now. No time to make alternative plans. She clambered down the remaining length of the crevasse, wincing at the feel of snow-dampened pants clinging to her legs.

Balanced on a rock edging the black, rushing water, she hesitated for only a heartbeat. She might have been able to make it all the way to the hillocks hopping from stone to stone, never wetting her feet, if she had half an hour. But her time was measured in minutes and seconds now. She stepped in. The water was shallow, rising just over her ankles, but so cold, it brought tears to her eyes. She jogged downstream, slowly at first, picking up speed as she got her footing on the smooth cobbled stones lining the stream. It felt as if she had two great toothaches at the ends of her legs, and every joint in her body throbbed with sympathetic pain.

She kept jogging, her teeth gritted hard against any sounds she might make, her arms held away from her body for balance. On and on she sloshed through the almost-freezing water, unable to think of anything except her misery. It wasn’t until she looked up and saw the darker outcropping of heavy stone that she realized she had reached the hillocks. She thrashed her way to the shore and leaped out of the stream, shaking and kicking each foot to expel as much water from her boots as possible.

Between the water and the snow was a tumble of smooth stones, wet but still free of ice, varying in size from hail to small boulders. Clare bent over and picked one up. It hefted well, about five pounds, flat enough so she could hold its edge with one hand if necessary. It was as close as she was going to get to an offensive weapon, unless she could take the gun off the man in the snowmobile suit. She stowed it in one of the parka’s cargo pockets, where it banged against her thigh every time she drew her leg up to climb the hillside. The ascent was difficult. She couldn’t flex her feet enough to get toeholds, so she had to use the outside edge of her boots and hang on, hoping she wouldn’t topple back to the bottom of the crevasse.

At the top of the hill she collapsed beneath the shelter of a pine tree. No light bobbing in the distance, yet. The rush of elation was enough to get her back on her feet. She looked at the hill she had just climbed. This way back would be her escape route if her ambush didn’t come off. She could roll down the crevasse within seconds and be headed in either direction quick enough to vanish. For awhile.

She squelched through the snow, keeping to the far side of the slope, her head a handsbreadth above the crest of the hill. She wanted a clear view of that flashlight. She teetered down one hill and trudged up another, looking for the trees she had marked in her mind. Surprisingly, her feet didn’t feel so bad. They prickled a little, but she didn’t feel the cold as keenly as she had.

By a cluster of tall firs, she went over the top, crawling on her elbows and knees to keep her profile low. The pines she had made a path to were a dozen yards away and almost directly below. He would step around them, careful to keep his gun between himself and the trees, and when he found she wasn’t there he would want to head up to the next obvious hidey-hole, the firs near the crest of the hill. On his left, he would see birch growing too thickly together to make an easy route up the hill. So he would go to the left of the firs. She hoped. With no time to create an obstacle to channel him toward her ambush, it would have to be nature or nothing.

She reversed direction, up over the top, backtracking a half-dozen steps. From this spot, she walked, crouching low, taking long steps, leaving as little trace of herself as possible. A little more than halfway between the two clusters of evergreens she spotted what she wanted. A birch sapling, almost branchless, a couple feet taller than her head and slim enough to wrap her hand around. She yanked open the bow beneath her chin and pulled the long drawstring out of the parka’s hood. Reaching as high as she could along the sapling, she drew its slender length down, holding hard against its springy recoil. She looped one end of the drawstring around a pair of miniature branches near the top of the sapling’s trunk and tied off tightly.

Scarcely two yards away lay the brown remains of a toppled fir, spiky, tangled branches and dead needles rising less than a foot out of the snow. Low cover, enough to keep her out of sight—barely—if she dug down and stayed flat. Low cover her hunter might overlook while he kept his gun and flashlight trained on better hiding places. Only problem was, the drawstring wouldn’t reach that far.

In the distance, a light winked. Clare’s stomach squeezed. Time. No time. She abandoned the sapling, string dangling, for the nearest shaggy hemlock. She grabbed a flexible, living branch from low near the ground, pulled it taut, and smashed her heel over the juncture where it grew from the trunk. The branch snapped free. Clare teetered for balance. She had scarcely felt the blow with her foot. That had to be a bad sign.

The light flashed again and again in the darkness. She retrieved the loose end of the drawstring and tied it with the feathery tip of the branch in a double knot. She pulled down on her string and branch. It held. She pulled farther, bringing the sapling over in an arch, retreating toward the desiccated corpse of the fir. The branch and the drawstring held. The birch sapling trembled, and Clare twisted the whip-thin fir branch several times around her fist, straining to bring the sapling closer and closer to the ground. One-handed, she tossed the heavy river stone beneath the dead fir and knelt, quickly pawing away some of the snow. She settled down flat on her belly, wiggling herself as far into the painfully sharp needles as she could go.

She pulled on the birch with two hands now, the effort shaking her shoulders, the tension in the branch cutting into her gloves. The sapling was almost buried in the snow now, a few feet of its trunk bowed up into view. It looked, she hoped, like a large fallen branch. Something a tired and angry man wouldn’t think twice about stepping over. Or at least stepping near. She couldn’t see the light anymore from her hiding place, but he was out there. Close by. On her trail.

She counted her own heartbeats, willing them to slow, disciplining her breath to a deep, even relaxation. She held perfectly still except for an involuntary twitch or shiver, letting herself be covered by a gentle layer of falling snow. The muscles in her arms and shoulders ached from the effort of keeping the springy sapling arched taut. Her feet seemed detached from her legs, which stung and burned from the cold radiating out of the frozen ground. Even the heavy parka wasn’t enough to keep her warm, lying motionless in a bed of snow.

Below her, she heard a noise. A slight snagging sound, the liquid slide of nylon dragged over something sharp. She gripped the branch more tightly. Tilting her head a fraction of an inch, she saw the faint glow of the flashlight beam playing over the tops of the fir trees, as if someone were crouched low at the base of the hill, training his light up underneath the first cluster of trees. The light shifted, disappeared.

Clare swallowed. Her heart felt as if it were trying to force sludge through her veins. The light reappeared, clearer now, sweeping across the hillside. It hit the birch trees, canted to the left, and then swung straight across toward her hiding place. She shut her eyes and held her breath. When she dared crack open an eyelid, the light had moved on. The flashlight was rocking, coming closer, the round brightness of it shockingly brilliant in the nighttime darkness. There was no sound of footsteps, no telltale crunch or snap or rustle. The thick, dry snow swallowed everything. He was nearing the kill zone. Cutting a zigzag path up the hill, pausing every few steps, shining his flashlight into the brush and evergreens.

Clare’s jaw clenched, excitement and adrenaline warring with fear until her muscles shook. She could make him out behind the light, now, the padded outline of a man, larger than she had thought on the camp road, face concealed behind an enveloping ski mask. He held the flashlight high, over his head, where the reflected light would least impair his own vision. His other arm pointed down, away from his side. Keeping the gun muzzle away from his body. He was cocked and locked then, ready to roll as soon as he caught sight of her.

A few more steps would bring him into range. His caution was the wariness of a hunter afraid of scaring off the game. Underestimating her. She was the hunter here. He had become the game the moment he stepped onto her hill. Everything except her awareness of him faded away, and she watched intently as he moved closer and closer toward the kill. Just a few more steps.

The flashlight beam played over the trees at the top of the hill. He took a step. He took another. Clare squeezed her hands around the branch. Waiting for him to give himself up to her. He shifted the flashlight away from the crest of the hill and scanned the first group of trees again. He paused, searching slowly and carefully with the light. Clare’s lungs burned, reminding her to breathe. One. More. Step. One more. Step. One more step. His face still turned downhill, he walked into her trap.

CHAPTER 24

Clare let go the draw. She heard, rather than saw, the swish of the sapling, the snap of the draw whipping the air, the shower of displaced snow. She seized the river rock and was on her feet before the full force of the young tree caught her assailant across the shoulders and back. The gun went off with a deafening hammerclap. His yell of pain cut off abruptly as he crashed belly-first into the snow. She launched herself into the air, smashed full-length onto his back, levered herself to a straddle and raised the rock over the back of his wool-covered skull. He bucked hard as she clubbed downward. Her killing blow fell off-center with a sound like rotten wood breaking open. He gurgled and sagged limply beneath her thighs.

She scrambled backwards, off his body, the rock banging and bruising her fingers as she staggered into a standing position. Crouching, she raised the rock again for the strike that would split his skull open. If you kill him while he’s unconscious, you’ll be a murderer. The thought seemed to come from outside herself. The rock trembled between her hands. If you aren’t gonna do him, at least make sure he’s not playin’ with you, the old warrant officer drawled in her ear. She drew back one ice-stiffened boot and kicked the sprawling form as hard as she could between his legs. No reaction. He was for sure either dead or unconscious.

She dropped to her knees and shoved both hands underneath him, flipping him with a grunt. She tugged her gloves off with her teeth and unsnapped the big pockets on his thighs, digging frantically for keys to a car, a truck, a snowmobile. At his waist the pockets had zippers with freezing cold tangs that bit into her fingers as she yanked and wiggled and pried them open. Nothing. The zippers on his arms were the same way, sticking tight, either frozen shut or jammed. She gave up trying to open them, instead compressing and sliding the fabric between her fingertips, hoping for something small and metallic. One pocket held a pencil or pen inside that rolled under her thumb, the other was empty.

Clare squatted back on unfeeling heels, her wet pants clinging to her thighs. Whatever he drove, the keys must still be in it. She pulled her gloves back on. She would have to make her way back to the junction of the camp and mountain roads. He had to have parked somewhere within walking distance of where he first assaulted her. He had to. She breathed deeply, striving for calm.

She looked about for the gun. The flashlight was lighting up a snowbank halfway down the hill, but she didn’t see a weapon anywhere. She stood up and circled around her opponent, casting about for a hole in the snow that could hold a firearm. She bounded loosely down the hill, retrieved the flashlight, and played the light over the snow while she hiked back to the unconscious body. Nothing. She blew out a breath in frustration. She was zero for zero. No, that wasn’t true. She was awake, on her feet, and had the flashlight. That put her way on top, for the time being.

She crouched at his head and tugged at the ski mask covering everything except his closed eyes. It was a long one, the dark wool disappearing into the zippered and snapped neck of his snowmobile suit. It stretched slightly, but stayed on. She tugged harder. It obscured his eyelids as it slid, then pulled up tight against her grasp. It was either caught in the zipper or fastened inside somehow. Clare tugged again, harder, and his head tilted. He moaned.

She leaped to her feet, raising the flashlight as if to club him senseless again. Except there was no way to ensure that hitting him on the head hard enough to put him out wouldn’t also kill him. She didn’t want to kill him. She didn’t have to kill him. He breathed out, a sigh. All she had to do was make sure she got to his vehicle before he did.

She circled around him and crouched just below his feet. He wore leather and rubber hunting boots, the kind LL Bean made, tucked beneath the elastic opening of his snowmobile suit. Clare pushed the padded nylon up his calf. His boot was laced and knotted tightly to a good five inches above his ankle. She yanked her gloves off again, stuffed them into her pocket, and picked at the double-knotted bow on top. It fell apart under her fingers. She hurriedly unhooked the laces from the endless series of hooks on either side of the tongue, then undid another double-knotted bow. Cradling the heel and toe between her hands, she wrenched the boot off. She wrinkled her nose at the sour smell. He moaned. Louder than the first time.

Clare shoved the other snowmobile suit leg up out of the way and tore at the top knot of his left boot. He moaned again. His leg twitched. She unlaced as quickly as she could down the rows of hooks, her fingers clumsy with tension and cold. She heard his head shift slightly. She scrabbled at the second knot, her fingernails shredding, her heart thumping in her ears. She loosened the knot a few inches before it caught and tightened again. She dug her hands into the boot’s tread and yanked, getting her legs under her. She landed on her backside, boot in hand.

Her assailant cried out something unintelligible. Clare dropped the flashlight into one of her cargo pockets, tucked a boot under each arm, and scrambled downhill, slipping and sliding. It took her several seconds to find the false trail she had laid down. Night was no longer imminent, it had arrived, and details that had stood out in the twilight blueness were completely obscured by the darkness and the relentlessly falling snow.

She jogged off at a fast shuffle, headed for the spot beneath the ridge where she had started her ambush trail. If she had kept the relative directions straight in her mind, that ridge should lead toward the mountain road. The flashlight in her pocket banged heavily against her thigh. Useless for finding a way to the mountain road through the trees and the storm. She would use it only as a last resort, if she had to retrace her route all the way from here to the spot on the camp road where the man had tried to shoot her. Otherwise, it would only make her an easy target. She hugged the boots more tightly under her arms. Not that she thought he’d be able to catch up with her now.

From the hillside behind her, she heard an enraged bellow. She skidded to a halt. She turned around, her feet deadened, her legs burning and stinging with cold, her arms cramped and aching. She clutched the boots in her stiff, clumsy hands and shook them over her head.

“Suck wind, you loser! I’m gonna put your boots over my fireplace and laugh at you every time I see ’em!” She spun around and bounded away. Another garbled, angry cry. She could make out, “Bitch!” and “kill you . . .” There was a sound of branches cracking, a deep whumpf as a heavy load of snow slid off an evergreen. Was he coming after her? Clare churned through the snow, blinking away the flakes that landed on her eyelashes, desperate to find that ridge.

She fell onto it, face first, when her nerveless feet rolled over a branch hidden underfoot and sent her sprawling. She swiped at her face, a hopeless gesture of drying, and groped for the boots. Dangling one glove from her teeth, she knotted the laces together and hung them over her shoulder. She went up the ridge soundlessly, listening for any indications that her attacker was on her trail. The huge silence of the forest was disorienting; she had no way of knowing if he had given up on catching her or if the sounds of his pursuit were being muffled by the snow and the trees.

At the top of the ridge, Clare crouched, looking for her old tracks. She finally found a few, frighteningly indiscernable, already vanishing under the falling snow. She stood up, thighs and back complaining, and pressed a gloved thumb hard between her eyes. Risk that the ridge would lead her to the road? Or backtrack along to the camp road, hoping that there was enough of a trail left to follow?

There was a sharp crack followed by a rustle. Impossible to tell how far away. Her heart seized hard, trying to send the icy slurry that was her blood into her frozen extremities. Time to fish or cut bait. She took one last look at the blurred marks she had left climbing up the ridge during her flight from the camp road. She stamped her boots and waded into the virgin snow to her right.

It was slow going. Plodding over branches and around trees, stumbling down one side or another and scrambling back up to the narrow ridge crest, misstepping again and again because she felt as if she were walking on wooden boxes, unable to read the terrain under her feet.

The cold stole inside quietly, implacably. Her legs had gone numb. Beneath her parka, she shivered spasmodically, violent quakes that did nothing to dispel the damp chill of her skin. Her face felt raw, her hands distant and unwieldy. Even her brain seemed stiff with cold. Instead of listening alertly for any noise from her attacker, she found herself drifting, mesmerized by her legs breaking the snow, by the constant movement of the flakes filling the air, by the patterns of the trees she slapped against as she plowed onward. Birch, pine, birch, unknown, fir, fir, hemlock.

With a start, she realized she had run out of ridge. The thin spine of rock had melded seamlessly into the forest floor, no slope on either side of her to keep her headed in one direction. No indication of which way she should continue. Nothing to keep her from wandering in circles until she surrendered to the cold. They say hypothermia is a happy death, the old warrant officer observed. Angry, frustrated tears flooded her eyes and spilled over, hot against her raw skin. She took off a glove and wiped them away with the heel of her hand. Breathed in shakily. Okay. She would navigate by line-sighting between trees, even if she could only see a few feet ahead. Tree by tree, she would try to keep to a straight path. If she didn’t reach the road within . . . a half hour, she would dig in. Branches and evergreen boughs were sure to provide her with some protection. Snow itself was an insulating material.

She had to force her spine to straighten, her legs to move forward. Her fear had cooled, too, to chilly despair. She sighted a marker tree and stumbled through the snow. When she reached it, she did it again. And again. And again.

When she caught the first flash of light from the corner of her eye, it almost didn’t register. It flashed again, and she jerked her head left, her mouth dropping open. It was a flashlight beam, a strong one, casting through the forest from some distance away. She steadied herself against a birch. Either she was saved, or there were two of them. All she had to do was find out which.

She giggled involuntarily. All she had to do was stalk this one, knock him down and whack him with her flashlight. Then she could take his car keys. She giggled again, shrilly, unable to stop herself. Stress and tension, the warrant officer drawled. Screws up your thinkin’. She swallowed a giggle, hiccuped, giggled some more. Hit herself three times hard in the midsection. When she was silent again, she set out for the light in the distance.

“Dispatch ten-fifteen, this is unit ten-fifty-seven.” Russ gingerly picked up the Styrofoam cup of hot cocoa and blew on it.

“Unit ten-fifty-seven, this is dispatch.”

“Hey, Harlene. You get ahold of Lyle and Noble yet?”

“I reached Lyle, he said he can come on in. Haven’t been able to find Noble yet.”

Russ took a sip and swiped whipped cream off his upper lip. His arteries were probably clogging even as he idled in the Kreemie Kakes parking lot, but on a stormy winter afternoon, nothing beat their homemade hot chocolate. He’d do penance later tonight when Linda served up frozen diet dinners. “Keep trying. Two Saturdays before Christmas, nobody’s gonna let a snowstorm stop ’em from shopping. I want to make sure we have enough men on the road once folks start plowing into each other.”

“That’s why I’m doing all my Christmas shopping over the phone this year.”

Russ took another sip before keying his mike. “Did you know Linda wants to put out a catalogue?” It was all she could talk about when he had picked her up at the train station noontime.

“Does she? Good for her! Sell enough of those fancy curtains and you can retire a rich man. Let her support you.”

“That’s the plan.” He slid the hot chocolate into a plastic cup holder. The prices she had been quoting for publishing the damn thing would have made his eyes pop out if he hadn’t been wearing his glasses, but she was convinced the increased sales would make it worthwhile. Linda knew a damn sight more about the care and feeding of money than he ever would. He hadn’t asked if increased sales would make their lives more worthwhile.

“Dispatch, I’m rolling out of Main and Canal, heading for Route forty-seven. Anything else?”

“Reverend Fergusson called a half hour ago. Said she’d be in her office in the church until five thirty or so. Want me to raise her for you?”

He tapped the microphone against his chin. “No,” he said, “I’ll swing by that way. Let me know if you can’t get Noble, we may have to call in one of the part-time guys. It’s gonna be a mess out here within a few hours.”

The church was dark when Russ pulled into the tiny parking area out back, but he could see lights shining from the attached building that housed the offices and parish hall. The kitchen door was locked tight. He followed the walkway shoveled around the parish hall until he reached the big double doors. Open, of course. He shook his head. It wouldn’t occur to her to lock the door behind her.

“Clare? Hey, Clare, it’s me. Russ.” He brushed snow off his parka. The coffeemaker squatting on the table was on. So were the hall lights. In Clare’s office, the remains of a fire burned low on the brick hearth. Her appointment book, a fistful of pink phone message slips and a half-full mug of cold coffee sat on her desk.

“Clare? You here?” Maybe she had run over to the rectory? He backtracked outside, crossed the parking area and craned to see over the tall boxwood hedge separating Clare’s driveway from the church grounds. The rectory was dark. No tire tracks or footprints marred the fresh snow on her steps.

Frowning, he returned to her office. What the hell had taken her in such an all-fired hurry she couldn’t bank the fire or turn off the coffeemaker? He glanced at her appointment book. Nothing for Saturday except a morning visit to the Infirmary. He flipped through the pink phone message slips. Nothing. He walked down the shadowy hall to the cold, dark church. A single votive candle hung in a red glass container to the left of the altar, washing a carved wooden cabinet with a ruddy glow. “Clare?” he called. His voice echoed back from hard lines of stone.

He slapped his gloves against one thigh, talking himself out of the unease creeping up the base of his skull. She had probably been called away on one of those mysterious “pastoral emergencies.” No big deal. There was nothing compelling him to find out what it was. Of course, if he listened to the answering machine, he might be able to figure out where she had gone without making an ass of himself calling around. He stalked back up the hall, annoyed at Clare for being so damn hard to get hold of, annoyed even more at himself for wasting time worrying about it.

The main office was as dark as the church. He snapped on the lights, dropped into the secretary’s chair, punched the blinking red button on the answering machine. It beeped and obediently began reciting its messages. Next to the phone was a spiral-bound book for written messages, yellow carbon copies, and unused pink tear-out squares. He sat up straighter. There were carbon records of his calls, that one about the baptism, a meeting, and there, slopping over two spaces, a detailed message he hadn’t seen on Clare’s desk.

Russ held the memorandum book at arm’s length, tilting his head back to make out the words. A meeting with Kristen McWhorter up in the mountains? He closed his eyes, envisioning the route described on the message copy. Somewhere around Tenant or Buck Mountain? West of Lake Lucerne. Wherever this cabin was, it would be one hell of a tough drive for Clare’s car. He cut off the recording in the middle of some woman going on about her son and dialed the station. “Harlene? I need you to find a phone number for me. Kristen McWhorter. It’ll be in either McWhorter file.”

He traced the slashes underlining URGENT! while waiting for Harlene to return with the number. Jumping into that piece of flashy junk and driving into the mountains without stopping to think about the consequences sounded just like Clare. Somebody needed to teach that woman to measure twice and cut once.

“Chief?” Harlene rattled off Kristen’s number. “Anything I can help with?”

“Nah. I’m just trying to track down Reverend Fergusson. She’s not here at the church. If she happens to call in, make sure you find out how I can reach her.”

“You got it.”

He hung up and immediately dialed Kristen’s apartment. It rang once. Twice. Three times.

“Hello?”

“Kristen? This is Chief Van Alstyne.”

“Oh, Christ. What is it now? You find something new?”

“No. Kristen, did you call Reverend Fergusson earlier today and ask her to meet you and your mother at a cousin’s cabin? Someplace near Tenant Mountain?”

There was a blank pause. “What? I’m sorry, Chief, my cousins live in trailers, not mountain cabins. I haven’t spoken with Clare since the day before yesterday. What’s going on?”

The unease Russ had been fending off jelled into a solid icy mass of dread. “I’ll get back to you.”

“Can you—”

He dropped the receiver in its cradle, rubbing his forehead with his fist. Christ on a bicycle. The question of who had set out to lure Clare into the Adirondack wilds would have to be put on hold. Whatever was waiting for her there was more important.

He tore the yellow carbon sheet out of the memorandum book and left the church office at a fast dogtrot. In his cruiser, he radioed Harlene while firing the engine up and maneuvering out of the tiny parking area. “Ten-fifteen, this is ten-fifty-seven, come in.”

“Ten-fifty-seven, this is dispatch, come back.”

“Harlene, I want you to call in Tim and Duane for traffic duty. Somebody pretending to be Kristen McWhorter conned Reverend Fergusson into driving up into the mountains.” Squinting at the yellow sheet, he read the directions to Harlene. “I’m heading after her. I’m inbound to the station, gonna switch this cruiser for my truck. She’ll handle the roads up there better.” He slowed to take the left onto Main.

“Do you want me to send backup along?”

He frowned at the snow spattering against his windshield. “No. I have a feeling we’re going to be short-handed as it is. I can handle this. Ten-fifty-seven out.”

He pulled into the station’s parking lot as he hung up his mike. His truck was parked in the rear, already blanketed with snow. He killed the cruiser’s engine, got out, unlocked the trunk. From its locked safety box, he removed the rifle and a box of shells. He cracked the magazine. The chambers were loaded.

Russ laid the rifle and the ammunition in the backseat of the pickup before starting it up. It roared to life reassuringly, warming up fast as Russ swept the dry powdery snow off the windows and headlights. By the time he hiked himself up into the cab, warm air was blasting from the vents. He tossed his gloves onto the yellow memorandum sheet, reversed, and rolled out of the lot, the four-wheel-drive gripping tight to the packed-down snow.

He made good time, considering the roads. Traffic was heavy on Route 9, as he had predicted, shoppers heading home to fix dinner passing shoppers just hitting the stores. The evening trade would be starting soon, maybe not dinners-out so much in this storm, but worse, habitual drinkers who spent every Saturday night on a barstool, Christmas party-goers who wouldn’t see anything wrong in having just one more cup of rum and eggnog.

The driving was trickier once he had taken the exit to Tenant Road. His truck held well to the road, but it was a bad surface, driven over just enough to be slushy and half-frozen. His windshield wipers beat away steadily at the spitting snow. The sound made him think of Wednesday night, driving through the last storm, Clare in the passenger seat, exhausted and weeping. Paying attention to everyone’s feelings except her own, until they snuck up and blindsided her. A single car approached. He squinted to make it out, snorting as it crept past slowly. Some Subaru. God damn, he should have dragged her to the Fort Henry dealership and made her lease something winter-worthy.

He passed a mom-and-pop store. Once its lights had dwindled in his rearview mirror, there was nothing except rising country and snow. His headlights tunneled through the dark, barely reaching two or three truck lengths before vanishing in the storm. The touch of light on each snowflake was as distracting as popping flashbulbs. Long habit helped him ignore the show, concentrating instead on what he could see of the road ahead.

Even so, he overshot the mountain road. The gap in the trees and the blank white roadbed registered a few seconds after he had seen it. He slowed carefully, taking his time before finally stopping and turning the truck around. Too many people forgot four-wheel-drive was meant to help acceleration, not braking. He had cleaned up too many of their accidents to make the same mistake.

His pickup ground slowly up the mountain road. He shook his head, trying to imagine Clare making it up here in her featherweight car. If she had made it. The snow had covered any traces of tire tracks that might show her route up the narrow, twisting road. He checked the trip odometer against the numbers on the directions. He ought to be getting close. If there was no sign of her at the cabin, he didn’t know what the hell he was going to do.

The unmistakable sound of a shot made him jerk reflexively, swearing. He slammed on his brakes, sending the truck into an angled skid. Twisted off the heat and killed the engine, rolling down his window clumsily. There was a bump, and the silent truck slid backwards and down slightly, its rear wheels coming to rest in the snow-covered gully at the edge of the road. Russ thrust his head through the window, straining to hear any other noise through the darkness.

CHAPTER 25

The slithery hissing of dry snow meeting snow. Everything else was an immense silence. He didn’t realize he had been holding his breath until it rushed out of his chest. He opened the glove compartment and removed his flashlight, long and heavy, a weapon in itself. Reaching into the backseat, he retrieved the box of shells and the rifle. He poured a good handful of shells into his coat pocket before tugging on his hat and gloves and stepping out of the cab.

He hesitated at the edge of the trees. He didn’t dare go more than a dozen yards from the road in the dark with no compass. He tugged his knit hat lower on his forehead. The thought of walking toward an unknown shooter shining a light and calling out made his nuts want to crawl back up inside his body. But if Clare had been—if she couldn’t see him, he could search for a week without stumbling over her. He cradled the rifle and thumbed his flashlight on. What the hell. Either the shooter wasn’t interested, or he was going to get drilled. Either way, he wasn’t walking out of here without doing everything he could to bring Clare with him.

He waded into the forest, sweeping his light around in 180 degree arcs, listening for anything that might indicate the presence of another human being. The cold pinched at his face. He thought of Clare, underdressed for the weather as usual, slogging deeper and deeper into the woods, slowly freezing to death. A hundred paces into the trees, he angled back toward the road, traveling downhill. If someone had been shooting, she must be around here. Noise traveled far in the mountains, but that shot had been close. Too damn close. He held up his arm to fend off lashing branches of bittersweet, trying not to picture her lying in a crumpled heap, her blood staining the snow red.

He angled again, away from the road, pushing through pines and hemlock. It was important to be methodical, not to give into the urge to run around yelling. A long zigzag pattern, working his way downhill because that’s the direction most lost folks take, his light shining like a beacon.

He heard nothing except his own breathing and the sweep and stretch of snow over the mountain. His throat closed over the fear rising in his gorge. Not the fear that he might get drilled by whoever else was out here with a gun. Fear that Clare was gone for good.

The flashlight beam hit him straight in the eyes, blinding him. He yelped involuntarily, so startled his mind went blank. His body knew how to think for him, though, dropping into the snow and sighting the rifle toward the other light.

“Russ?” Her voice was weak and cracking from the cold.

“Clare?” He scrambled back to his feet, swinging his flashlight in her direction. “Oh, my God. Clare.” She staggered toward him. He crossed the distance first, catching her in his arms, the rifle and flashlight clunking together as he picked her up off the ground. “Clare. Jesus, are you all right? Were you hit?”

“My feet . . . I can’t feel my feet anymore.”

He released her to shine the light over her again. Her face was raw, chapped and scratched. Thank God she had been wearing a departmental parka. It looked as if it were holding up, but her pants were wet up to her thighs and chunks of ice and caked snow were frozen to her flimsy boots. He flashed the light up again.

“What the hell are you doing with hunting boots hung over your shoulder?” She opened her mouth. “No, don’t tell me now. My truck’s about seventy yards away. I can carry you, but I think we’ll be faster and steadier if you can walk.”

She nodded. “I can walk,” she said.

He looked around them. “The shooter—is he close? Did you get a look at him?”

She shook her head. “I couldn’t see his face. He’s—” She rubbed her eyes with a snow-clotted glove and blinked hard. “I don’t know if he’s close by. He’s unarmed, though. He lost his gun when I took him out.”

He hung the rifle strap on his shoulder and took her arm, shining his flashlight toward the way out of the woods. “You took him out? What do you mean?”

She clutched at his arm, but otherwise walked steadily. “I knocked him down with a sapling tree and bashed him with a rock. I couldn’t find his gun, but I took his flashlight and his boots.”

He helped her over a fallen log. “You took his flashlight and his boots.”

“I wanted to find his car keys but he wasn’t carrying them. I was . . .” She gulped air. “I was working my way back to the road. To find his car or whatever. Snowmobile.” He tightened his grip on her arm. She gulped again. “But I was going the other way when I saw your light, Russ. I was going the wrong way.” Her voice cracked. “I thought I was headed for the road, but I must have gotten turned around. I would have . . . I would have just kept on walking . . .”

Up ahead, he saw a flash where the light caught metal. “Almost there.” He couldn’t see her face. Only the fur encircling the hood. He forced himself to speak confidently. “You wouldn’t have kept on walking, darlin’. You’re too smart. You would have dug in, covered yourself up. Probably figured out some way to build a fire. With pine needles and a gum wrapper.”

She made a dry sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob. He could see his truck clearly now. “C’mon, let me take you up.” He picked her off the ground and settled her against his shoulder, grunting with the effort. “Good God, woman, what are you wearing, lead-lined pants?” She made the sound again, this time more a laugh.

At the truck, he opened the passenger’s door first and helped her in. Climbing into the driver’s side, he almost laid the rifle in the backseat again, then thought better and slid it bore-down next to the door, within a moment’s reach. He fired up the engine and turned on the dome light before rummaging in the back for his two spare blankets. “Okay, darlin’, let’s get your wet things off.”

She nodded jerkily. She pulled off her sodden gloves and dropped them on the floor, but she couldn’t manage the snap and zipper at her neck. “My fingers,” she said.

He nodded. “We need to take a look at your feet first anyway.” He lifted her stiff, ice-encrusted boots into his lap. “What the hell did you do to get these so wet?” The laces were unmanagable. He flipped open the glove compartment and removed his knife.

“I . . . ran through a stream. Only fast way to . . . get to the spot I picked to . . . ambush him.” She shivered violently as he sliced her laces away and gently wiggled each boot off. “I’m so cold . . .”

He adjusted the vents to blow on her. The hot air was already blasting at top speed. He carefully peeled away her socks, sucking in his breath at the sight of the blotchy white patches mottling blueish skin. Jesus. How had she hiked through the woods like this? Under his hands the flesh felt like heavy clay that had been stored in a refrigerator. “Oh, darlin’,” he said.

“Is it bad?” He looked at her. “Tell me the truth, Russ.”

“It doesn’t look like frostbite, but we’re going to have to soak your feet in cool water and bring ’em up to temperature slowly. Here, let’s get those pants off you.” He tried to be gentle, but he had to tug and wrestle the stiff, wet khaki off her, each jerk and twist causing her to gasp. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Clare.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s good. It’s burning. That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Means the blood is coming back.” The skin on her legs was alarmingly cold and pale, but there were no signs of frostbite there, either. He cocooned her feet and legs in one of the blankets. “It’s gonna hurt like a bitch when you get circulation going. Like when your leg falls asleep, but lots worse.” He kept her legs resting on his thighs while he went to work on the parka, unbuttoning and unzipping. Underneath, her woolly turtleneck was dry. He wrapped the second blanket around her, chafed her hands between his own. “How do they feel?”

“Cold. Like the rest of me.”

“Can you feel this?” He ran his fingertips lightly down her fingers and across her palm.

She looked at him. Her eyes were huge and dark. Her fingers flexed over his. “Yes,” she whispered. The hot air roared past him, stirring staticky cobwebs of her hair. He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. She raised her free hand as if she would touch his cheek, then let it fall. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. She blinked against the watery light in her eyes. “I was such a jerk last night. I’m sorry, you were right, you were right about everything.”

He dropped his gaze to her hand, picked up the other one and began rubbing them vigorously. “Maybe. But I shouldn’t have been such a hard ass about it.” He smiled at her. “And I wasn’t right about everything. Ballistics came back negative on their gun. We’re still waiting to hear about the hair and fiber samples from their cars.” He looked at her extraordinary face, laced by angry scratches and chafed raw by the snow and cold. He squeezed her hands hard. “I was right about one thing, though. This isn’t any business of yours. Jesus, Clare, you could have died out there!”

She smiled waveringly. “Not me. I’m too smart.”

He released her hands, swinging her feet to the floor. He reached around her and buckled her in. “Let’s get you someplace warm, smart girl.”

The truck strained and groaned before lurching from the ditch and turning slowly back down the road. “What about the man who attacked me?” Clare asked.

Russ kept his attention on the road. “What about him?”

“Aren’t you going to try to find him? Or at least find his vehicle?”

He spared her a glance. “Do you have any idea where he is? Or where his truck or snowmobile is?”

“No.”

“And he doesn’t have any boots on?”

“No.”

“You said you couldn’t see his face?”

“No! He had one of those face masks on, and I tried to get it off, but the damn thing was stuck!” She snorted. “Then he started to wake up and I thought I’d be better served getting the heck out of there.”

“Good girl. And the answer is no, I’m not going after him. I could turn out the National Guard and we’d still never find him in this weather. My first priority is to get you thawed out. We can be at the Glens Falls Hospital in half an hour if the county’s gotten the plows out.”

“No. No hospital. I don’t like hospitals.”

“You go to hospitals all the time, for Chrissake!”

“Not for myself!” She had an edge of hysteria to her voice. He shut up. “Just take me home, Russ,” she said. “Please.”

“Okay, darlin’. Home it is.” He downshifted in preparation for churning the truck out of the snow and leaf-filled gully. And then I’m going to get someone to take a look at you if I have to knock you down and sit on you to do it.

CHAPTER 26

They didn’t talk much on the ride back to Millers Kill. Clare leaned back against the seat, exhausted, her mouth thinning occasionally when they went over a bump. He knew her legs must be hurting. Despite his sensible words, he was sorely tempted to round up as many men as he could and scour the mountain for the sonofabitch who had done this to her. But he had been right, it would be a waste of time at this point. Either the guy had found his way back to his vehicle or he was losing his feet to exposure someplace.

He glanced over at Clare. Knocked him down with a tree and bashed him with a rock. Jesus. He smiled a little.

When they pulled into her driveway, he said, “Keys?”

“I left them in my car. But don’t worry, it’s—”

“Unlocked. Of course.” She didn’t argue when he opened her door and picked her up to carry her inside. He grunted as they went up the steps. “Don’t make a habit of this, Clare, or I’m going to have to buy a truss.”

Inside, he deposited her blanket-wrapped form on the sofa and cranked up the thermostat. “Okay,” he said, “You need dry clothes, a tub of tepid water to soak those feet in—” She groaned loudly at the suggestion. “—and something warm to drink. Not coffee, the caffeine’s bad for your circulation.”

“Hot cocoa?”

“That’s fine. Where can I find stuff?”

She gave him directions. Her bedroom was spartan, nothing but bed, dresser, and her Army sweats tossed over some wooden kneeler-prayer-thingy in front of the uncurtained window. He grabbed the sweats and dropped them next to her on the sofa before hitting the kitchen to find the cocoa ingredients. No bags of instant, of course. He put the milk on to heat and rummaged beneath the sink for a plastic tub, which he filled with lukewarm water.

“You decent?” he called from the kitchen.

“Yeah.”

He walked slowly, careful not to slosh the water. “Stick your feet in there,” he said, settling the tub in front of the sofa. She pulled the legs of her sweatpants up a bit and complied.

“It feels warm.” She looked surprised.

“That’s because your feet are so damn cold. I don’t have to do anything like hand-grate imported bittersweet chocolate and hazelnuts for this hot cocoa, do I?”

She made a face. “Just sugar and cocoa. Oh, and a drop of vanilla extract is nice.”

“I have to introduce you to the Kreemie Kakes Diner version of hot chocolate.” He found everything quickly. Like her office, her kitchen was orderly and well-organized. She was a woman who had her priorities, no doubt about it.

“Here you go.” He put two mugs on the coffee table, then crossed to the front window and tested to see if the tops locked.

She craned her neck to see what he was up to. “What are you doing?”

“Locking you in.” He moved to the front door, threw the bolt and latched it at the top. “Who can I call to come and stay with you tonight?”

“Russ!” She sounded scandalized. “I couldn’t impose on anyone like that.”

He turned to her. “Clare, someone put a lot of effort into killing you tonight. Let’s not make it any easier for him to take a second crack at you.”

“But he’s—”

“We don’t know what he is. The guy who attacked you might be a Popsicle right now. Or he might have gotten onto his snowmobile and ridden away. And don’t forget whoever that woman was who called the church to get you out there.”

She worried her lower lip. “All right. You can make sure the doors and windows are all locked,” she said. “But I don’t know anyone well enough to ask over. It would be an imposition.”

“Your mother teach you that? You sound very Southern when you say ‘an imposition.’ ” He crossed the room to stand in front of her sofa. “You’re exhausted and you can barely walk. You think of someone you can ‘impose’ on right quick like or I’ll station one of my officers here.” She glared at him. “Which will mean taking someone away from traffic duty during a major storm.”

Her face melted into a look of concern. She gnawed on her lower lip again. “Doctor Anne,” she said finally. “Anne Vining-Ellis. She lives a couple blocks away.”

“She the same Doctor Anne who works the Glens Falls emergency room?” Clare nodded. “I’ve met her. I’ll give her a call.” There was a cordless phone on the table behind the sofa. He dialed information, punched in the number and headed for the stairs. “I’m going to check the upstairs windows,” he told Clare.

“I can’t believe I’m letting you do this,” she said.

“Hello, Ellis residence.” He jiggled the latches in Clare’s bedroom. Locked.

“Hi, is this Dr. Vining-Ellis?”

“Sure is.”

Another bedroom was empty except for a Nordictrak exercise machine and a floormat. The windows were locked.

“This is Chief Van Alstyne of the Millers Kill Police Department. We’ve met a few times before—”

“Over a few drunk drivers. Of course. How can I help you, Chief?”

He sketched out the situation while testing the latches in the next bedroom. It looked as if it had been a guest room for the former priest, and nothing had been removed. He was pretty sure the gun and dog prints and the dark Depression-era furniture weren’t Clare’s. Doctor Anne was horrified at the story of her priest’s ordeal. “Of course I’ll come over and stay with her,” she said. “It’s absolutely no trouble at all. I’ll bring my kit and give her a going-over, too, just to make sure she doesn’t need to be admitted to the hospital.”

He thanked the doctor and rang off. One of the windows in the bathroom was propped open a sliver. A fine line of snow had accumulated on the sill. He shut and locked it. The toilet was running, and he couldn’t get it to stop by jiggling the handle. Inside the cistern, the plunging apparatus was falling apart. He frowned. Couldn’t her parishioners pay for a plumber, for Chrissakes? Well, he could pick up something at Tim’s Hardware, put it in for her next time he was around this way.

“Doctor Anne’s on her way over,” he announced as he reentered the living room. Clare groaned. “And she said to tell you it was not an imposition.” He stuck his hand in the water her feet were soaking in. Cooling. “So, you wanna tell me about what happened?” He headed into the kitchen for more hot water.

“Master Sergeant Ashley ‘Hardball’ Wright saved my sorry ass,” she called after him.

He poked his head through the swinging doors before emerging with a teakettle of hot water. “Hey! I thought I saved your sorry ass.”

She smiled faintly. “You helped. You surely did help.” She sipped her hot cocoa and dabbled her feet while he poured a thin stream of steaming hot water into the tub. “How on earth did you know I was out there?”

He told her about finding the paper trail at St. Alban’s and calling Kristen.

“So she didn’t have anything to do with it. Well, I didn’t think so, not after that guy took a shot at me.” She tipped her head back and closed her eyes. “Although before that, when I drove my car over a cliff, I had my doubts. Maybe she was just really bad at directions.”

“You drove your car over a cliff? Christ.”

She frowned.

“Sorry.”

“Well, maybe it wasn’t quite a cliff. A big gorge. My car is totaled.” She compressed her lips in an expression he was beginning to recognize. “I loved that car. I don’t get attached to many material things, but I really loved that car.”

“You have any idea who could have been behind this?”

“How about this? This morning, I found out that Katie’s secret lover was Wesley Fowler. His family are members of the congregation. And about as far from the McWhorter’s as you can get, socially, culturally, economically . . .”

“How the hell did you get that piece of information?”

She told him about her visit to Paul’s office at the Infirmary and the photograph. “It’s still in the pocket of my parka. Your parka,” she amended. “I visited the Fowlers to see if they knew anything about it, which they didn’t, unsurprisingly. Then I went to Albany.”

“Albany?”

“I wanted to see if Katie’s roommates might recognize Wesley’s picture.”

He rolled his eyes. “You know, Clare, the Albany PD already questioned at least two of the roommates.”

“But they didn’t have a picture, and I did. And I had his yearbook.” She twisted on the sofa to face him more fully. “Ow! You were right about the hot prickles. Anyway, at first I thought it was a bust, because none of the girls recognized Wes. But then, just by chance, they spotted a picture of Alyson Shattham. And guess what? She had been to see Katie. It was not a cheerful social visit. They had a fight.”

“When was this?” He swept the newspaper off one overstuffed armchair and perched on the edge.

“Beginning of the school year. September.”

“Huh. Little Alyson Shattam. Who said she hadn’t seen Katie since graduation.”

“Guess who Alyson’s boyfriend was all through last year.”

He smiled slowly. “Wesley Fowler.”

“Ten points.”

“Where is this kid? Still in town?”

“No, he’s a plebe at West Point. His father’s gone down to bring him back, though. They should be here tomorrow.”

He began twisting the sheets of newspaper into kindling. “Want a fire?”

“Please.”

He raked the old ashes to one side and laid splitwood from a big basket over the paper. He crossed two small logs over the kindling and struck one of her silly six-inch-long matches. “Alyson and Wes,” he said, tossing the match on the fire with five inches left unburnt. “A boy and a girl. Go to the same church. Are their families friends?”

“Oh yes,” she said. He sprawled back onto the armchair. “Oh, I feel warmer already. I may become addicted to fires.”

“Yeah, the Shattams were with the Fowlers this morning when I went over. I knew about Alyson and Wes before, though. Dr. Anne’s son gave me the inside scoop on all the high school gossip this past Monday. Sounded like they were the classic king and queen of the prom pair.”

“You sound a tad disenchanted, there.”

“Oh . . . that’s just an old high school outsider looking in, I suppose.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You’ve met Alyson. She clearly believes that the world owes it to her to treat her like the princess she is. And from what I’ve heard of Wes Fowler, he’s the same type, a golden boy who’s never had anything bad happen to him.”

“So what do you think? Did Alyson know Wes was seeing Katie on the side? Maybe she wouldn’t put out and Katie would? So she let Katie keep Wesley-boy happy?”

“There’s no doubt that Katie did, as you oh-so-tastefully phrased it, ‘put out.’ But honestly, I can’t see Alyson Shattham standing by while her boyfriend gets . . . serviced. She strikes me more as the kind of girl to keep him on as tight a leash as possible.”

“Yeah, I know that type. Gets her kicks from making some poor slob jump through hoops for the promise of some—” Clare was looking at him with undisguised interest. He felt the tips of his ears redden. “Never mind. I agree, it’s more likely Alyson didn’t know that Katie was sleeping with Wes.”

“But then, at some point, it’s more than just sleeping with her. He gets her pregnant. Could he have come running to Alyson then?”

“What for?”

“Help. Advice. Forgiveness. Knowing a little bit about the psychology of teenage boys, I’m willing to bet a non-pregnant girlfriend suddenly looked a lot more appealing to him.”

“She looked genuinely surprised to me that morning at your church. Of course, I’ve been fooled before.” He watched Clare twist a strand of hair around her finger and chew her lip. “Okay. Let’s say he did tell her. What do the king and queen of the prom do when he’s gotten another girl knocked up?”

“They make the problem disappear?”

“Let’s say Wesley persuades Katie to give away the baby.”

“That could explain Alyson’s visit to Albany. Maybe she was the go-between, trying to talk Katie into it.”

“But a few days after leaving the baby at your back door, Katie gets back in touch with Wesley. She says she can’t stand it, she wants the baby back.”

“I don’t think Wes Fowler would have been too keen to have it come out that he got a girl from Depot Street pregnant and then abandoned the baby outside St. Alban’s on a freezing winter’s night. The West Point commandant and the ethics commission take a dim view of that sort of thing.”

Russ snorted.

“And there had already been a story in the paper, remember? The day after we found the baby? There wouldn’t have been much chance of him keeping it quiet if Katie tried to reclaim Cody.”

“So one of them—Wesley or Alyson—decides to stop Katie before she can tell anyone she’s the baby’s mom. One of them gets her out by the kill and cracks her head open and leaves her there to die.”

She swished her feet through the water.

“But then another problem rears its ugly head,” he said. “Darrell, who evidently once saw Katie and Wes together.”

“He must have seen the Fowlers’ family picture on our parish bulletin board Wednesday morning when he met with me and the Burnses. That would explain why he broke off the discussion so quickly, if he had a name to put with a face, finally.” She shook her head, silent for a moment.

“If he did, it’s not your fault, Clare.” She glanced up at him. “You’ve got your responsible look on,” he explained. She gave him a half smile. “We know he called somebody. Maybe he was putting the squeeze on Wesley, and the kid high-tailed it back to town and put a bullet through Darrell’s slimy little brain.”

“Or Alyson did.”

He looked at her, nonplused. She spread her hands. “You think she couldn’t? Maybe she’s the shooter while Wes went to the house in Albany to collect any incriminating evidence.”

“The guy who said he was Katie’s father? The roommate described him as older, with a mustache.”

“According to Dr. Anne’s boy, Wes Fowler was in the Millers Kill High School Drama Society. He appeared in several plays and in the yearly musical. A little left-over gray tint in his hair, a fake moustache . . . it might been enough to fool a couple of freshmen who had had a few too many beers.”

Russ slid out of his chair and squatted on the floor in front of her. “Let’s have a foot.” She lifted one, dripping, out of the water and let him squeeze it. “Need to heat it up a bit,” he said. He held a hand against the copper teakettle, checking to make sure it was still warm before pouring a stream of warm water into the tub.

She made a noise in the back of her throat, flexing her toes. “If he did kill Darrell and clean out Katie’s room, he must have thought at that point he had covered all the bases. There wasn’t anything to link him to Katie except Cody himself, and who would think to ask for Wes Fowler’s DNA to test for paternity of poor Katie McWhorter’s abandoned child?”

“Nobody, until the Reverend Fergusson got her hands on a photo of the two of them together and immediately rushed over to confront his proud parents with evidence that one plus one makes three.” He turned to the fireplace and tossed another log in. “Holy Christ, Clare. You really could have died up on that mountain. You were supposed to have died.” He rubbed the back of his neck.

“Would he have had time to get from West Point to here and set up that ambush for me?”

He stood slowly, turning around, scanning the dark corners of the room without meaning to. “I don’t see why not. It’s a three-hour drive at most, another hour to get himself parked somewhere safe on a camp road on Tenant Mountain. It’s not as if he needed to come up with an elaborate way to trap you. All he needed was a good way to get you up to that mountain and someone pretending to be Kristen McWhorter.”

“Which brings us back to Alyson.”

“She knew you were helping Kristen, didn’t she?”

Clare nodded.

“And she must have known you’re the sort to charge off to help first, without asking questions until later.”

She cocked her head at him. “You make me sound like the Lone Ranger.”

“Doesn’t make it untrue. The fact that you’re impulsive is not a deeply hidden character trait.”

“I prefer to think of it as making decisions quickly.”

“I’m sure you do. Prefer to think of it that way.”

The doorbell chimed. He headed for the kitchen to admit a snow-dusted Dr. Anne.

“My car’s blocking you in, so we’ll have to switch,” she said, unwinding an immense scarf from her neck. “How is she?”

“I’ve got her soaking in a tub of lukewarm water that I’ve been heating up gradually.” The doctor stared at him. The tips of his ears reddened. “I mean, her feet. She’s soaking her feet. In there.” He led Dr. Anne into the living room in time to see Clare standing wobbly-legged, clutching at the back of the sofa. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said, more loudly than he intended.

She grinned at him tensely. “I believe it’s called ‘walking.’ It’s all the rage of the over-one-year-old set. Hi, Dr. Anne.”

“Sit down, you damn fool woman.”

She straightened, releasing the sofa. The lines and planes of her face tightened. “I have things to do,” she said through gritted teeth. “I have to call Kristen, and Mrs. Fowler. And the deacons, to let them know I may not be able to celebrate seven A.M. Eucharist tomorrow morning.”

He reached over the sofa and wrapped his hand around her arm. “You don’t need to prove how tough you are. I already know. Clare, please. Sit down.”

She looked at him, then sat.

Dr. Anne dropped her medical bag on the sofa next to Clare. “As soon as I’ve checked you out, I’ll help you make those phone calls.” She glanced at Russ. “Anything in particular I need to watch out for?”

“You see anything, or hear anything that makes you feel uneasy, call the station. No, give me a call.” He scrawled his home number on the scratch pad next to the cordless phone base.

“I will, Chief. Let’s move those cars so you can get out.”

He looked down at Clare. She smiled crookedly. “Thank you. It seems inadequate, but thank you.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Just take care of yourself. I’ll see you tomorrow. Try not to get into any trouble until then, okay?”

“Okay.”

Dr. Anne waited while he pulled on his boots and coat. Outside, snow still fell furiously. His truck was already blanketed again. “I can’t thank you enough for coming to stay with her,” he said. “She’s so damn busy taking care of other people’s needs she completely ignores her own.”

Dr. Anne smiled knowingly. “Mmmm. Yes, I know the type.” She paused, one hip bumped against her car door. “Chief? I don’t mean to pry, but I heard Clare’s car was parked at the foot of your drive all night Wednesday.”

“What? That’s ridiculous! I mean, yeah, it was there, but that’s because it was snowing and I drove her home.”

Dr. Anne raised her hands placatingly. “I’m not trying to imply anything. I just wanted you to know that if I’ve heard talk, other people have too. It’s a small town.”

Russ hauled open his truck door. “Christ, isn’t that the truth. If folks are so interested in the whereabouts of Clare’s car, let’s hope somebody saw something that’ll tell us who wanted to dump it into a gorge. With her along for the ride.”

CHAPTER 27

Clare looked out at her congregation as the last notes from the communion hymn faded and wondered if one of the people looking back at her wanted her dead. Alyson Shattham and her mother were in their usual spots, but the Fowlers, who usually sat nearby, were missing. As were the Burnses. Sterling Sumner was glaring at her again while Doctor Anne, who last night had argued strenuously against her celebrating the nine o’clock Eucharist, was frowning in concern.

Ronnie Allbright, her acolyte, turned a page in the huge presentation prayer book that lay propped open on the altar. Clare glanced at the text of the post-communion prayer and took a deep, slow breath, focusing on the clear channel of the words. “Almighty God,” she began, and the voice of the congregation joined her in a rumble, “We thank you for giving us the most precious body and blood of your son, Jesus Christ . . .” She knew the prayer like she knew the names of her family. It settled and centered her, so that when she raised her hands to bless the congregation, she could feel an honest surge of affection and support for them all.

Martin Burr attacked the organ, pumping out the opening strains of “On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry.” The torch-bearers and the crucifer assembled in front of the altar to begin the recessional. Clare glanced up from her hymnal just in time to see the inner vestibule door opening at the end of the church. Russ Van Alstyne slipped inside. Across the length of the nave, his eyes met hers.

The calm and centered feeling she had been nursing vaporized. She joined the recessional, last in line, inadvertently wincing at the ache that intensified every time she put a foot down. She kept her gaze fixed on the hymnal in order to remember a song she had known by heart since childhood. At the conclusion of the hymn, she stood for a beat too long, unable to dredge up the simple words to dismiss the congregation. She could see the back of Alyson Shattham’s hair, immaculate and shining. Finally she blurted out, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord, Alleluia, Alleluia,” and bolted toward the door while everyone else was still responding with their own Alleluias.

“What are you doing here?” she hissed at Russ.

“I’m going to talk to Alyson,” he said, bending down to keep his voice close to her ear. “What are you doing up and walking around? How do your feet feel?”

“They hurt. But not bad enough to miss the Eucharist. Why here?”

“Because I want her comfortable enough to talk, of course. You’d be amazed at how many people clam up and call for a lawyer when you haul ’em into the station for questioning.”

“The whole ‘separation of church and state’ thing doesn’t carry much weight for you, does it?”

“I think the church-as-sanctuary rule went out a few centuries ago.”

One of the ushers bumped past them. “Excuse me, Reverend, but I have to get these doors open.”

Clare and Russ stepped out of the way. Parishioners clad in bulky winter wools and chain-tread boots jostled each other on the way down the aisle. “I have to do the receiving line,” she said. “I want to be there when you talk to her.”

“I figured you would.”

She pasted on a pleasant expression, shaking hands, exclaiming over bits of news, thanking those who offered to volunteer for the Christmas preparations, all the while watching as Russ intercepted Alyson and her mother in their pew and spoke with them. Alyson shook her head. Russ jerked his thumb toward the door. Alyson said something to her mother, who fluttered her hands like a bird afraid to fly. Russ leaned forward. When he stepped back, both the Shatthams collected their things and followed him up the side aisle toward the parish hall.

Clare had no idea there were so many people in her congregation. She felt as if she had shaken five hundred hands and listened to at least that many comments about yesterday’s storm before the last of them left the vestibule and she could painfully stump her way up the aisle, through the hall, and into the meeting room.

This time, Russ was the one sitting with his back to the window. Brilliant sunshine from a sky swept clean by the storm glowed around him, partially obscuring his face. Alyson slouched in the chair opposite him, twisting a strand of hair around two fingers.

Clare shut the door against the hum of conversation and the clink of coffee cups coming from the parish hall. “Good morning, Alyson, Mrs. Shattham.”

“Reverend Clare,” Barbara Shattham said, “Chief Van Alstyne says he needs more information about the dead girl. And that we’ve been waiting for you?”

Russ rose and ceremoniously pulled out a chair. Clare cocked an eyebrow at him. “I know your feet must be hurting you after your ordeal last night,” he said.

“Ah.” She got it. “Yes, thank you.” She hobbled more obviously toward the table and sat down.

“Where’s your husband, Mrs. Shattham?”

She frowned. “At home. He’s not feeling well. He went cross country skiing yesterday and overdid it.”

Clare shot a glance at Russ, but his eyes never left Barbara Shattham’s face.

“Did you go with him?”

“It’s not a sport I enjoy.” She turned to Clare. “Reverend Fergusson—”

“Did he get home early or late?”

“What?”

“From skiing. Did Mr. Shattham get home early or late?”

“I don’t know! Early evening. Seven or eight o’clock. What’s this all about?”

Now Russ looked at Clare. She bit her lip, thinking. Could Mitch Shattham have been the man who attacked her? He was about the right height and size, inasmuch as she could tell from a bulky snowsuit. Just how much would he do for his little girl?

“Yesterday evening,” she turned toward the Shatthams, “there was a phone message waiting for me when I got back from Albany. I believe you knew I was going to Albany, Mrs. Shattham.”

Barbara Shattham blinked, then nodded.

“And you told Alyson about what had happened at the Fowlers. That I discovered Wes and Katie McWhorter had been dating.”

“Yes, I did. It concerned her, after all.”

Clare looked directly at Alyson. “But you weren’t surprised when your mother told you that Wes had had another girlfriend last year, were you? You already knew about him and Katie.”

Alyson’s fingers twitched at her hair. “No, I didn’t.” Sweet. Simple. A child who had never been called on cookie-stealing or missing homework.

“Katie has three roommates who have identified you from photographs as having visited her at the beginning of the school year.” Russ’s voice was calm. “Now, we can have them all come up for a live lineup—”

“A lineup? You mean as in arresting my daughter?”

Alyson’s mouth dropped open. Her hair fell from between her fingers.

“She could do the lineup voluntarily. Or, she could do it after we’ve arrested her.” He stared at the girl. “Or, she could tell us what she knows right here.”

“I didn’t do anything! Mummy, honestly, I didn’t hurt anyone!” Her blue eyes swam soft and liquid with tears.

“There, you see?” her mother began.

Russ rose from his seat. “Alyson Shattham, I’m placing you—”

Alyson squealed. Russ sank back into his seat, slowly. The girl glanced at Clare and dropped her eyes. “Okay, I did know Wes was hanging around with Katie. I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to her, okay? I only went down to Albany to tell her to lay off because it was like, time for the school-year fling to be over.” She turned to her mother. “I mean, can you really see some chunky girl from Depot Street going with Wes to the Academy Ball? She was like, so wrong for him.”

Clare leaned into the table. “You didn’t know she was pregnant when you fought with her in Albany, did you?”

“God, no! That’s so gross!” She raised her eyebrows. “I think Katie must have done it on purpose. Like to get him to marry her. Or for the welfare money. You know what those girls are like.”

Clare opened her mouth but Russ stopped her with an upraised hand, shaking his head minutely.

“Why did you lie to us about not having seen Katie, Alyson?”

The girl glanced at her lap. Her shoulders twitched in what might have been a shrug. “I . . . um . . .”

“Where were you yesterday evening?”

“Huh?”

Mrs. Shattham frowned. “She was at home all afternoon and evening.”

“Did she receive any phone calls?”

“Are you kidding? Of course she did. If Mitch and I didn’t have our own line, we’d never be able to use the phone.”

Russ removed a small notepad from his chest pocket. “Can you give me her number, please?”

“Why?”

“It’ll make things go faster Monday morning when we contact the phone company for a record of all her outgoing calls.”

Clare watched Alyson. She had never seen anyone actually go white before. Barbara Shattham started to protest. Clare laid a hand over her arm, stilling her. “Last night,” she said, “a young woman claiming to be Kristen McWhorter called the church and left an urgent message for me to join her.” She looked steadily at Alyson. “This young woman left directions for me to drive. I’m not very familiar with this area yet, as you know, so it helps a lot if I have directions. These ones weren’t so good, however. They led to a washed-out road crossing a gorge. My car went in. I was fortunate—very fortunate—to walk away. My car was totaled.”

“Dear God,” Barbara Shattham said. “Are you suggesting my daughter had a hand in this? That’s outrageous.”

Alyson’s gaze darted between Clare and Russ.

“I was stranded on Tenant Mountain with no vehicle and no cold-weather gear,” Clare went on. “But that wasn’t the worst. The worst was when a man in a snowmobile suit began shooting at me.”

Everyone was silent for a moment. Russ clicked his pen and poised it over the notepad. “We can get a list of Alyson’s calls first thing tomorrow morning,” he said. “We’ll be able to see right away if she called the church office yesterday.”

Barbara Shattham stood abruptly. “She’s not saying anything else until we see our attorney.”

Russ leaned back, crossing his arms. “Well, that’s certainly your right, ma’am. I was hoping we could sort things out right now, though.” He shifted, splaying his hands on the table. “Let me make my position clear. Katie McWhorter and her father are both dead. Your daughter was seen arguing with Katie, who was poaching on her territory with Wes Fowler. She has access to a four-wheel-drive vehicle, she was in town during both murders, and when Reverend Clare found out about Katie and Wes, I believe your daughter sent her off on a wild goose chase designed to get her killed.” He pinned Alyson with a level stare. “Either you give up a better suspect, Alyson, or I’ll arrest you on two counts of murder and one of attempted murder.”

The girl let out a nasal whine. “It wasn’t me!”

“Alyson, don’t—”

She swung her head violently, her perfect hair cascading everywhere. “I’m not going to jail for Wesley Fucking Fowler, Mother! Not after the way he’s blown me off!” She reached across the table toward Russ. “He sent me an e-mail yesterday afternoon. Asked me to call and say I was Kristen. He was all sweet, just like he used to be, you know? It was just, like, a joke, because the Reverend had been poking around. I didn’t know anyone was going to be hurt. I swear! I should have known he was yanking my chain. He’s been, like, thanks but no thanks ever since he started sneaking around with that bitch.”

Barbara Shattham sat down heavily. “Alyson,” Clare said, “What about Katie?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with that. And you can bet Wes didn’t say anything to me. Except for a family get-together around Thanksgiving, he hasn’t said shit to me since he left for the Academy.”

“Alyson, your language . . .” Mrs. Shattham’s voice trailed off.

“When was the last time you saw Katie?” Russ asked. “For real, this time.”

“When I went to her house in Albany that time. I didn’t know she was pregnant, I swear. I kept thinking, like, how could he prefer her to me? She was like, a size fourteen, for God’s sake.”

“Did Wesley ever indicate that he was having problems, or that he was troubled about his relationship with Katie?”

“He was weirding out before he went away to the Academy, but when I tried to talk with him, he blew me off. I had already figured it out, him and her, for God’s sake. But he goes, ‘just don’t tell anyone.’ Like I would. That’s why I went to see her. And that’s the last time I saw her. Alive or dead.”

Russ and Clare looked at each other. He nodded slowly. “Thank you, Alyson. Mrs. Shattham, I suggest Alyson stay close to home.”

“What do you think she’s going to do, run to Canada?”

“I’m not worried she’s going to flee jurisdiction. I’m worried because she knows something about Katie and Wesley. Just like Clare and Darrell McWhorter did. And look what happened to them.”

Barbara Shattham clutched her daughter’s sleeve. “Dear God.” She glared at Russ. “She’s in trouble because she’s spoken to you. I expect you to provide us with police protection.”

Russ pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “Mrs. Shattham, she’s in trouble because she’s an accomplice to attempted murder. I’m not going to arrest her now. I may not ever arrest her, depending on what the district attorney has to say. I will,” he stressed, “take any attempt to get in touch with Wes Fowler as a sign that she’s actively assisting him. So take her home and keep an eye on her.”

After the Shatthams left in a swirl of silky hair and tearful glares, Russ shook his head. “Girl like that makes me grateful I never had kids. Holy shit. What a self-centered little monster. Excuse my French.”

“You wouldn’t have a girl like that.”

“I can understand why kids from crappy neighborhoods with piss-poor parents get into trouble. But how can kids with every advantage turn out so badly?”

Clare leaned forward. “Because the things you have, and the neighborhood you live in, doesn’t have anything to do with what kind of human being you are. As I’ve said before.”

“As you’ve said before.” He smiled slightly. “What do you think? Was she telling the truth?”

“I don’t know. She sure sounded pi—peeved at Wesley, though. I’d swear she was genuinely surprised that first time you questioned her, when she found out about Katie being pregnant.”

“Well, that shoots my boy-and-girl-did-it-together theory.”

“Vaughn Fowler should be back home with Wesley by now.”

“That’s assuming he wasn’t already back home last night, trying to shoot you.” From the open door, Clare could hear the sounds of coffee hour. “You probably have to go join your flock.”

“Oh, no.” She sank back into her seat. “I missed the Christmas cookie sale.” At Russ’s look she explained, “Fund-raiser for the choir. Everyone brings in cookies and you mix and match what you want to buy. I was going to show the flag by getting two bags’ worth.” She tried to pile her hair atop her head, but it was already in a French twist. She settled for pushing at the bobby pins. “I guess I may as well bow out entirely and come with you to see the Fowlers. Give me ten minutes to change out of my vestments and say good-bye.”

He looked at the ceiling. “Why don’t I just deputize you and issue you a gun, while I’m at it?”

Clare rose from the table. “No, thanks. But if there’s a paying position as departmental chaplain, I’ll take that. I’m going to need some extra money if I ever hope to replace my car.”

CHAPTER 28

It was a short drive from St. Alban’s to the Fowlers, but it was long enough for Clare to work up a full head of nerves and excitement. Fortunately, Russ was an easy person to be keyed up with; he listened to her ramble on about her ideas for the mother-and-baby outreach program, interjecting a question every time she stalled out over the realization that they were minutes away from confronting the young man who might be Katie’s killer.

As they turned down the long country road that led to the Fowler’s house, she confessed, “I’m a little tense about all this.”

“Oh? I never would have guessed.”

She punched him in the arm.

“Ow!”

“Don’t you feel it, too? This may be it! Finally.”

“I’ve done this a few more times than you, Reverend. Questioning someone doesn’t get me all worked up.” He glanced over to see her scowling. “Of course, it’s different if I think the person I want to question is going to start shooting at me. I remember one time, I was working the violent crimes unit at Mannheim, we were investigating a series of rapes. Chief suspect was a ranger who taught hand-to-hand combat. One of these guys who can disable you with his forefinger and kill you with one hand tied behind his back. Walking up to his quarters to question him, I thought I was going to piss my pants, I was so scared.”

“What happened?”

“I talked him into coming with me to the M.P. post. That’s ninety percent of police work, you know, being able to talk and keep on talking until the problem is defused.”

She pointed to a neatly plowed gravel drive. “Here it is.” She recognized the Fowlers’ Explorer and Volvo sedan. There was also a brand new Jeep Wrangler parked in front of the barn. “That must be Wesley’s truck.”

Russ parked the patrol car behind the Jeep and took a slow walk alongside it on his way to the door. Clare, staring into the windows, caught sight of herself and quirked her mouth. What did she think she was going to see, the abandoned snowmobile suit and a gun? She stepped lively to catch up with Russ, who had mounted the front steps.

Edith Fowler opened the door. Her deep-set eyes showed stark and white in her narrow face, like a spooked horse trapped in its stall.

“Mrs. Fowler? I’m Chief Van Alstyne. May I come in?”

Her social graces kicked in and her face relaxed. She opened the door widely. “Certainly, Chief. Reverend Clare, I’m glad to see you here as well.” In the foyer, she took their coats. “I’m sorry we missed church this morning, but it’s been . . . well . . .” She gestured down the hall. “They’re in the family room.”

Clare stepped out of rubber rainboots, the only foul-weather footwear she owned since trashing her leather boots last night. She was glad she hadn’t changed into civvies. Her collar and black blouse created a shield dividing the woman who had slogged through an icy stream from the priest who was here to counsel and support this morning. You are what you wear, she could hear her grandmother lecture, stuffing Clare-the-tomboy into a ladylike dress. She plucked a piece of fluff from her ankle-length black wool skirt and followed Russ through the door.

The family room had obviously been a later addition to the old house. Its cathedral ceiling allowed for a Christmas tree that was easily twelve feet high, and the sweep of windows created an unbroken vista of snow and hills. The Fowler men were rising from a cluster of leather-covered love seats and chairs.

“Chief Van Alstyne.” Vaughn Fowler didn’t sound surprised to see a uniformed officer in his home at eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning.

Wesley looked startlingly like his father: same height, same strong features, same heavily-muscled build. His hair was shorter than even his father’s military clip, shaved down to a bare fuzz. His face was strained and weary. He looked older than his eighteen or nineteen years, and Clare thought it entirely possible he could have been the “older man” Katie’s roommates had seen.

“This is my son, Wesley.”

“Sir.” Wesley pumped Russ’s hand.

Vaughn waved Clare over. “Wes, I don’t think you’ve had the chance to meet our new priest yet. This is the Reverend Clare Fergusson.”

“Ma’am.” Clare and Wesley studied each other while shaking hands. He was definitely discomfited to see her. Was it because she was the one who had brought his connection to Katie out in the open? Or because she had brained him with a rock last night? A tough, strong kid like him could have recovered enough from last night’s violence to appear this morning as if nothing had happened.

“Let’s all sit down.” Vaughn gestured Clare to one of the caramel-colored chairs. He was looking the worse for wear, too. As the men took their seats, she wondered if his control of the situation was what was keeping him together. “I’ve been talking with Wes.” Vaughn said, before Russ could speak. “He has something to say to you, Chief.”

The young man stood. “Sir, I am—I was Katie’s boyfriend. I am the baby’s father. There’s no need to do a blood test. I’m responsible.”

Russ laced his hands across his belt. “Sit down, Wes, you’re not on report.” The boy sat, spine held straight and away from the back of the love seat. “So you’re Cody’s father. Were you with her when she had the baby?”

“Yes sir. It was just after Thanksgiving.” He glanced at his father. “I told my folks I was spending a few days with a friend. I took Katie to the Sleeping Hollow Motel, and she . . . she had the baby there.”

“What happened after Katie gave birth?” Clare said.

“We waited a day to make sure he was, you know, okay, then we left him on the steps at St. Alban’s.”

She leaned forward. “Why?”

He glanced at her and then focused his gaze at a point two inches to the left of her head. “Ma’am, we agreed with each other to give the baby up. We thought—I thought, with the Burnses looking to adopt for so long, that it would be easy. Make sure they had the baby and then Katie and I could get back to our lives.”

Clare steepled her fingers against her lips, holding back her reaction to such raw thoughtlessness.

“I didn’t know the police would get involved!” he said. “I didn’t know she would—” he caught his breath. “I just found out last week she had been, had been, killed. Alyson called me.” Clare noticed a distinct lack of warmth when he mentioned his official girlfriend’s name. “She said Ethan had been arrested for the murder.”

“Ethan Stoner was arrested for threatening an officer and resisting arrest.” Russ said. “He’s no longer a suspect in the murders.”

Wesley drew a deep breath. “I didn’t kill Katie or her father. Sir. I—” his voice broke, a reminder that he was barely more than a boy after all. “I cared for her very much.” He looked at Clare, square on. “I guess it was stupid to just leave the baby. But I knew there was a meeting that night, and that somebody would find him quickly. I thought once he was gone everything could be normal again.”

His distress caught at Clare. “Pretending nothing happened can’t right the world again, though, can it?”

He shook his head. “I want to do the right thing. Even though it’s too late for . . . Katie. I’m ready to take care of the baby, to be his father.” He glanced at his own father. “I’ve discussed it with my folks.”

“That’s a very stirring sentiment from a boy facing a double murder rap,” Russ said.

Vaughn laid a hand on Wesley’s shoulder. “My son has said he had nothing to do with the murders of the girl or her father, and I believe him. He’s a Fowler. He wasn’t raised to tell lies.”

Russ unlaced his hands. “No offense, Mr. Fowler, but your son has already lied through omission about a lot of things, including his relationship with Katie, his whereabouts, and the fact that he’s now a father. You’ll understand why I have to take what he says with a grain of salt.” He turned to Wesley. “The way I see it, you were desperate to keep the existence of Katie and Cody under wraps. You thought the Burnses would step in and take care of your responsibilities for you. My guess is, sometime between the night you dropped Cody off at the church and the night Katie’s body was found, she got in touch with you and said she had changed her mind.” The young man’s face flinched almost imperceptibly. “Your plan for getting on with your life was about to be royally screwed. So you told Katie to meet you back in Millers Kill, drove her out to Payson’s Park to discuss things, brained her with a tire iron, and rolled her down the hill into the river.”