In the Bleak Midwinter

“No!”

“It wasn’t the blow to the head that killed her, you know. She froze to death.”

“No!” Wesley erupted from his chair, lurching toward Russ.

His father moved like an uncoiling spring, seizing his son by the arms. “Stop it, Wes! Stop it.”

“This is what we’re going to do,” Russ said, standing slowly. “Wesley, you and I are going to the station, where we’ll have a talk with Mr. Kaminsky of the D.A.’s office. If we decide we have enough to hold you on, we’re going to charge you.” Russ’s gaze flicked from the young man’s pale face to that of his father. “Mr. Fowler, I suggest you call your lawyer and meet us at the station.”

“You can’t question him without the presence of one of his parents.”

“He’s over eighteen.”

“I didn’t do it,” Wesley said. “I didn’t do it.” He shook himself free of his father’s restraint and turned to the older man. “What if I refuse to go?”

Russ broke in. “I’ll arrest you right here.”

Vaughn looked at his son for a long moment. “You go with him, Wes.” The young man opened his mouth in protest. “It’ll be for the best. We’ll get a lawyer over there and have you back out by dinnertime.”

“I didn’t kill her, Dad. I couldn’t have.”

Vaughn squeezed his son’s shoulders. “I know you didn’t, Wes.”

“Let’s get your coat, Wesley.” Russ stepped out of the way, keeping behind and to the side of the young man. He looked as if he sorely wanted to use his handcuffs.

“Mr. Fowler,” Clare said quietly, “I didn’t drive myself here. If you’d like me to, I’d be happy to stay here with you and Mrs. Fowler and come back to town with you. If you think I could be of some help.”

Vaughn Fowler looked toward her, his gaze already a thousand yards ahead of him. He shook his head. “Thank you, Reverend, but under the circumstances . . .”

“Of course. The last thing I want to do is be intrusive.” She impulsively took one of his hands between hers. “If I can do anything, please. Please give me a call.”

From the hallway, Mrs. Fowler wailed. Vaughn Fowler jerked his hand from Clare’s grasp and strode toward the sound.

“No, no, no,” Wesley’s mother said, clutching at her parka-clad son. “You can’t take him! You can’t take him!”

“Edith!” Vaughn Fowler grasped her upper arms firmly and tugged her away from Wesley. “Edith.” He spoke quietly, almost intimately. “I’m calling the lawyer right now. Wes will be back home with us tonight.”

“Mom, I’ll be okay. Please.”

“This can’t be happening, not to us, not to our son—” Edith Fowler pressed one hand over her mouth, shuddering. She blinked hard, but no tears fell.

Her husband glared at Russ. “If anything happens to my son while he’s in your care, I’ll have your job.”

Russ bristled. “I don’t allow police brutality in my force, Mr. Fowler. Come on, Wesley. Clare, are you riding with me?”

She snatched her coat from the hall closet.

“Don’t say anything until our lawyer gets there, Wes. Understand me?” Wesley nodded to his father as Russ led him down the steps toward the squad car.

Clare stood on the threshold. She spread her hands, miserably aware of how much she had contributed to these people’s unhappiness and how little she could do to comfort them. “I’m so sorry. At times like these, it’s tempting to feel as if you’ve been abandoned, by God and by your friends. Please remember that’s not true.”

Edith Fowler blinked again and wiped her eyes. “This whole thing is like a nightmare.” She looked at her husband. “My God, Vaughn, do you realize we’re grandparents?”

“I guess you’re right.” His face tightened. “Clare, will we be able to see the child? Or do we have to jump through some bureaucratic hoops now that he’s in foster care? Where is he?”

“I don’t know what sort of requirements the Department of Human Services will have. I suspect that if you two feel up to it, they’d be happy to have you serve as Cody’s foster parents. His caseworker’s name is Angela Dunkling, and right now he’s fostering with Deborah McDonald, out toward Ft. Henry. I’ll call you with their phone numbers as soon as I get back to my office.”

Behind her, Russ tapped on the horn. “Meanwhile, I hope you’ll reach out for some support and not try to go it alone.”

Edith nodded. “I’ll call Barb and Mitch. After all, they’re involved too, in a way.”

Clare opened her mouth and closed it again. If she got into exactly how involved the Shatthams had become last night, she could be here all afternoon. They’d find out their son’s latest attempt to get out from under his problem soon enough.

“You do that.” She retreated down the steps. “We’ll speak soon.”

She tugged on the car door, only to find it locked. Russ leaned over and let her in. Sliding into her seat, she glanced through the clear Plexiglas screen at Wesley, sitting perfect-postured in the back. The small sliding door that allowed for communication between front and back was latched shut. Clare reached for it.

Russ shifted the car into gear. “Clare, I’d rather not have any more questions until we get to the station. I want to do this by the book.” He backed slowly out of the Fowler’s drive. “I want his voluntary statement on the record, not in a car where his lawyer will be able to get it thrown out at trial.”

She cast one more look back at the young man. He met her eyes, bleak and hopeless. She had wanted to feel a sense of triumph, of justice, when they caught up with Katie’s killer. Instead she felt an ache in the pit of her stomach. So much damage. To so many lives. And it wasn’t over yet.

CHAPTER 29

At the station, Russ escorted Wesley into the interrogation room and latched the door behind him. “I’m going to make a pot of coffee,” he said to Clare. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a cup right now.”

“Please. What happens now?”

“I already talked with Kaminsky last night, so he’ll be expecting my call. He’s going to be here to listen in to the questioning. I want to charge this kid some bad, but I want it to stick.” He squinted into the distance. “We’ll need a cross-jurisdiction warrant to search his room at the Academy. And I want his truck . . .”

Clare cut him off. “Can I speak with him now? Not as part of this, but as priest to parishioner?”

Russ frowned. “You just met him this morning. How much of a pastoral relationship can you have?”

“That’s not the point, Russ. I want to help him if I can. He’s obviously very troubled.”

“He’s very troubled because he carefully planned and executed two cold-blooded murders and now I’ve caught his ass, excuse my French. And let’s not forget he would have done the same to you if you hadn’t escaped him. Jesu—um Crow, Clare, you’d try to make excuses for Charles Manson!”

“I’m not making excuses for anything he may have done.” She crossed her arms. “No one is beyond forgiveness, Russ. Or beyond asking for forgiveness. I have to believe that.”

He pulled off his glasses and polished them on his shirt front. “I don’t even know why you’re here. After I speak with Kaminsky, I want you to take my truck and go home.” He rapped on the door to the interrogation room. “Wesley? Reverend Clare here would like to speak with you as your—” he glanced at Clare, “—spiritual advisor. You want to talk with her?”

There was a pause. “I guess so. Okay.”

Russ unlatched the door. “There’s an alarm buzzer on the wall. If he makes any moves on you, use it. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Clare nodded. The room was a smaller version of the meeting room, albeit without windows. Heavy, well-worn wooden table and chairs, tired institutional green walls. She had thought there would be one of those two-way mirrors like in the movies, but it looked like the Millers Kill police department wasn’t quite up to cinematic standards yet.

Wesley was standing at the far end of the room, his back against the wall, his eyes shadowed and suspicious. She tugged at a chair. It was bolted to the floor. She sat down and propped her chin in her hand. “I’m the one who found Cody, you know.”

Wesley looked at his boots. “Yeah, I know.” He darted a glance at her. “My dad says you’ve been working hard to see that the Burnses get to adopt him.”

She nodded. “You could help with that. As his father, you can authorize a legal adoption just by signing over the papers. They wouldn’t have to wait and wonder the way they are doing now.”

He brushed the speckled vinyl floor with the toe of his boot. “I guess we never realized that you couldn’t just give away a baby. I didn’t mean to have them wait. We just—it was easier to not think about it. The fact that there was a baby on the way. We never exactly planned any of it.”

“What about the motel? The fake I.D.? That must have taken some planning.”

“I already had an old I.D. I had doctored up so I could, um, get into bars.” He looked at the wall opposite him. “I met her at her school—she had her roommate’s car—and we stopped at the first place that was open. We weren’t even sure if she was going to have the baby then or not. She’d been having those, you know, fake contractions.” He tilted his head back. “It all seemed so unreal. Being there, the baby, everything. I just wanted things to go back to the way they were. Without our parents finding out.”

“Why did you leave the baby at the church instead of at the Burnses’ house?”

“They weren’t home when we drove by. Then I remembered my parents talking about the reception for the new priest that night. We figured somebody would find the baby and read the note and hand him over to the Burnses. Pretty dumb, huh?”

She bit her lower lip. “It wasn’t the smartest thing, no.”

He glanced at her. “Hey, do you think if I help the Burnses adopt the baby quickly, it’ll help me with the cops?”

“I don’t think so. It might help you with your own conscience, though.”

He dropped into a chair opposite her. “What we’re talking about here, you can’t tell that to anyone, right?”

“No, I can’t. What we say here is just between you and me and God.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“Wesley . . .”

“Reverend, I didn’t kill her. Or her rotten father. And it’s been driving me crazy, because I don’t know who could have done it. She was so . . . she was so special. Sweet. Funny. She didn’t like me because of my family or my car. She didn’t care if I got into student council or West Point. She liked me because of who I was. Not who I was supposed to be. You know?” He rubbed his hands back and forth against the tabletop. “I didn’t want to have a baby. And I didn’t want to get married. But it wasn’t her, it was just . . . it was too soon. You know what I mean?”

“Yes.”

“And I don’t think she really wanted to get married and keep the baby, either. She sent me a long e-mail about how she did, after we had both gotten back to school, but I don’t think it was something she had thought out. My dad said that after-pregnancy hormones can make a woman kind of crazy, and if I just let it be for awhile, she’d realize that rushing into marriage would be a bad idea.”

“Your dad said that?”

“Yeah. I figured, if she really couldn’t stand not having the baby, I could transfer from the Academy to SUNY Albany. Forget the whole military thing and go for a business degree, something so I could support them as soon as I graduated. But I didn’t know how I’d swing it financially.” He looked up at her. “You don’t have to pay to go to West Point, you know, so I didn’t have anything saved. I didn’t know if my parents could help us out. I wanted to talk about it with Dad before I suggested it to Katie.”

She took a slow, deep breath to keep her voice even. “You offered to leave West Point? You spoke with your father before Katie was killed?”

“Yeah. I didn’t want to let him know how bad I screwed up, but I had to. I mean, if we had taken Cody back and gotten married, Katie would have had to drop out if she joined me at the Academy. Lose her scholarship. That would have been a total waste. She was so smart. God, I can’t believe she’s actually dead.” Wesley buried his face in his hands.

Clare sucked in air and held her breath for a moment. “Wes? This is going to sound strange, but can I touch the back of your head?”

He looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “Uh . . . this isn’t some sort of faith-healing thing, is it?”

“No.” She rose partway from her chair, extending her arm toward his close-cropped hair. “May I?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

She ran her hand lightly over the crown and back of his skull, then pressed more firmly with her fingers. Nothing. No bump, no swelling, no soft spot. “Does this hurt anywhere?”

“No. What are you doing, Reverend?”

“Feeling my way toward the truth.” She sank into her chair again. “You weren’t out in the woods last night trying to kill me.”

He reared back. “Are you crazy? Of course I wasn’t out trying to kill you. I wasn’t trying to kill anyone! I was in my dorm room, studying.”

“What time did your dad pick you up to bring you home?”

“Early this morning. There must have been a dozen guys who saw me there last night, in my room, in the hall, in the john. You can ask them. I wasn’t out trying to kill anyone. I’m not a killer!”

Clare looked at her hands, flat on the table. She flipped them over and studied her palms. “Anyone can be a killer, Wes. All it takes is the right training. And enough motivation.” She blew out her breath. “Could your father access your e-mail account?”

“Huh? Not my account at the Academy. He could send stuff from my old address at home, he knew my password for that.” Clare stood, wrapping her arms around herself. “Why? What the hell does this have to do with—” his face changed suddenly.

“Your father,” she said.

“No,” he said.

She felt as if she had just flown into a strong thermal and gained a thousand feet of altitude in a few seconds. Dizzy. Disoriented. From where she was now, everything was the same, but everything looked different. “Your father, Wesley.” She looked down at the young man. His face was a mask of absolute denial. “Your father is so proud of you. And so determined that you go to West Point and have a brilliant military career. What wouldn’t he do to protect you from ‘ruining your life’ with some white-trash girl and her baby?”

“No,” he said.

“He must have contacted her and invited her to Millers Kill. Maybe he tried to bribe her into forgetting about you and Cody first. But that didn’t work. He wouldn’t have known that that wouldn’t work with someone like Katie. So he got rid of the problem another way.”

“No!”

She paced around the table, talking as much to herself as to Wesley. “We assumed that Darrell McWhorter threatened to blackmail Cody’s father. But why go to a kid in college when you can tap into so much more money from his dad?” She leaned over the table. “He saw you two together, didn’t he? Darrell.”

Wesley hesitated, then nodded. “I drove her home from the library late once. She used to have me leave her at the intersection, but it was dark and starting to snow, so I took her right to her apartment house instead. She was always scared that her dad would find out about us. He was just getting back from a bar or something that night, and got a real good look at me.” He leaned back in his chair and scrubbed at his face with his hands. “Katie said he asked her a lot of questions about me, but she convinced him I was just a guy in her study group.”

“Darrell was smarter than any of us gave him credit for. As soon as he saw your family photo on the parish bulletin board, he put all the pieces together. When he called your father, they must have agreed to ride down to Albany to get any incriminating stuff left in Katie’s room as part of the deal. And when your father saw his chance to get rid of Darrell, he acted quickly and decisively.” She straightened. “Wesley, your father’s been methodically removing every person who might interfere with you becoming the fifth generation of Fowlers to graduate from West Point.”

“This is insane. My dad wouldn’t kill anybody! And if he’s willing to do anything to protect me, why the hell wouldn’t he confess instead of letting the cops cart me off to jail?”

“Your dad could kill somebody, Wes. He’s done it before, lots of times. It’s just not in the line of duty this time.” She paused. “Or maybe for him it is.” She crossed her arms and blew out a frustrated breath. “But you’re right, it doesn’t make sense that he’d let you be convicted of—” her stomach clenched into a tight ball. “Oh, my God. The baby.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“The baby, Wes, the baby! The one you told him you were ready to raise as a single father? The baby who is the root of all his troubles? Oh, holy God, I told him where to find him. I told him.” She slammed her palm against the alarm button, setting off an electronic siren that made the edge of her back teeth ache.

The door rattled and then Russ was inside the room, crouching low, his gun drilled at Wesley. “Down on the floor! Now!” Wesley fell out of his chair, flat and spread-eagled. Russ didn’t look away from him. “Clare? Are you okay?”

The siren made it impossible to talk. “Yes!” she shouted. “I just needed to get out of the room!”

“What?” Russ straightened and stalked over to the alarm. He twisted a knob. It fell silent, leaving sound-echos ringing in her ears. “What the hell did you mean, setting off an alarm just to get out? You don’t move until I say you do, mister!” He swiveled his gun back toward Wesley, who had levered himself up on his arms.

Clare opened her mouth to tell Russ everything, then shut it again. What we say here is just between you and me and God. Priestly confidence. Her throat and chest felt as if they would burst with her discovery. A discovery she couldn’t share with anyone. She groaned.

“Clare?”

“Give me your truck keys. Now.”

“What’s—”

“Now, Russ!” He fished his keys out of his pocket.

“I’m going to Deborah McDonald’s house out on Aubry Road near the intersection of old Route One Hundred.” She jabbed a finger at Wesley. “You! Tell the chief everything!” She pelted through the door before Russ could stop her with any more unanswerable questions.

After her speedy little MG, driving Russ’s pickup felt like piloting a C-130 Hercules transport down the runway. She rolled over the corner curb getting out of the parking lot and nearly sideswiped a carload of Christmas shoppers. Fortunately, the route to Deborah McDonald’s was mostly through countryside. As soon as she hit the town limits, she tromped on the accelerator. “Let’s see how fast you can go, big guy,” she said to the speedometer. She knew her way from Millers Kill to both the Fowlers’ and the McDonalds’, but she had no idea how long it might take Vaughn Fowler to get from his place to Cody’s foster mother’s. She pressed harder on the gas pedal. Maybe she was wrong, and she’d find the baby napping peacefully. Maybe the McDonalds were out shopping. Maybe Wesley’s father was too busy rousting out a lawyer on a Sunday afternoon to think of Cody. Maybe.

Just past the turnoff from old Route 100, she went over the ridge and around the corner way too fast, overcorrected, and would have hit an Explorer heading up the hill if it hadn’t slid into the shoulder. Its horn blared as she went past, her heart beating out of her chest. The next corner she took slow and safe, cresting the top carefully until the valley stretched out before her like a Christmas card. Everything looked peaceful in the McDonalds’ yard as she pulled in.

As she jumped down from the truck, the front door flew open to reveal Deborah McDonald. Today’s sweatshirt pictured two kittens playing with mistletoe. “Oh, my goodness,” Deborah said, “you’re that lady priest. Are you with the family? Do you know where he’s gone?”

Clare’s skin prickled. “What’s happened, Mrs. McDonald?”

“I just had a visit from Cody’s grandfather. At least, he said he was Cody’s grandfather. He knew who Angela Dunkling was—”

“What happened?”

“He was with the baby in the living room while I went to get some pictures, and when I came back, they were gone! I wasn’t sure what to do. I was about to call the folks at DHS . . .”

Clare took the front steps two at a time. “You need to call the police. Tell them Vaughn Fowler has the baby. What was he driving?”

“A big, blue sport-utility truck.”

The Explorer! “Tell them he’s in a dark blue Ford Explorer. I passed him on the curve before this. I didn’t notice the driver.” God had better forgive her for being such an idiot, because she wasn’t about to. She swung around to dash down the steps again.

“Wait! Where are you going? Where did he take Cody?”

Clare closed her eyes. Where. “Let me use your phone for one moment before you call the police,” she said.

Deborah McDonald pointed through the door. Clare strode through the living room, snatched up the receiver and dialed Information for the Fowler’s number, which she punched in before the electronic voice was finished with the last digit.

The phone rang. And rang. And rang. Clare thought she might scream.

“Hello?” It was Edith Fowler.

“Mrs. Fowler, this is Clare Fergusson. Do you know where your husband is?”

“He’s not here, Reverend. He asked me to call our lawyer and left right after you did. Why? Nothing’s happened to Wes, has it?”

“No, no. Did Vaughn have his gun with him?”

“His gun?”

“Is there any way to check? Please, it’s important.”

“Why on earth—”

“Please! It’s important.”

“Let me look in the gun case . . .” over the phone, Clare could hear the sounds of a door opening and shutting. “I’m right here in his study. His rifles are all here, but his Colt is missing.”

Clare would have bet a year’s salary the Colt was buried in a snowdrift somewhere on Tenant Mountain. “Listen, Mrs. Fowler. I’m calling from Cody’s foster mother’s house. Your husband has taken the baby. If he comes back home or contacts you, try to keep him calm and get the baby away from him. Let the police know right away.”

It was so silent Clare thought for a moment the line had gone dead. “I understand,” Edith Fowler said finally. “I will.”

Clare rang off and headed back outside. Vaughn Fowler was unarmed. But she couldn’t shake the conviction that he meant to dispose of Cody once and for all.

“Did she know where he went?” Deborah McDonald asked as Clare hauled herself into the truck’s cab.

Where would he go? Where, when it was so easy to kill an infant? Clare pressed her fingers to her forehead. When you are threatened and on the run, you will tend to return to the same base of operations, “Hardball” Wright drawled. If not to the same spot, then to the same sort of terrain. Remember that. The enemy will. She opened her eyes. “I think he’s headed for the river. The trail from Payson’s Park or the old railroad bridge. I’m going to head there. Let the police know.” If Russ had any better ideas, he could chase after them without her. She ground the gears and backed out of the driveway, catching the McDonald’s mailbox with the rear bumper and setting it swinging wildly.

Traffic through the north end of town was agonizingly slow, but she didn’t know any other way toward where she and Russ had discovered Katie’s body. She swung onto the Cossayaharie road, Route 137, driving carefully, tamping down the urge to go faster and faster, afraid she might miss the turnoff to the park.

She nearly did miss it, mistaking the newly plowed entrance for a driveway. At the last moment, she turned the truck into a frame-shuddering turn and rolled down the lane toward the parking area. The county plow had cleared a large U out of the fresh snow before heading back to the main road. She couldn’t tell from where she sat if there were tracks heading down the trail. Leaving the truck running, she jumped from the cab and ran to the edge of the parking lot. Behind the ridge of snow thrown up by the plow, the trail leading down to the kill was unbroken by footprints or tire tracks. “Vaughn Fowler,” she hissed from between clenched teeth, “where are you?”

CHAPTER 30

Clare ranged up and down the edge of the parking lot to make sure Fowler hadn’t cut through the woods to join the trail further down. Her rubber boots weren’t meant for snow, and the treads slipped and slid as she searched for any sign of the man. Nothing. She muttered obscenities she hadn’t allowed herself to use in several years and climbed back into the truck. The engine on, she rested her head against the steering wheel and breathed deeply to calm herself. Could she be wrong about where Fowler was headed? After all, it would be easy to kill a baby anywhere—a story where ancient Romans had disposed of infants by smacking them into walls thrust itself into her consciousness. She wrenched her mind away from the horrific image and concentrated on Vaughn Fowler.

The riverside bank, the rest stop on a remote stretch of highway, an abandoned camp road high on a mountain. Every place he had killed or tried to kill had been isolated, a place where a body could disappear for hours. Or years. She sat up, rubbing at the crease in her forehead left by the wheel. Her instructor from Survival School had been right. Fowler was returning to the same sort of terrain. She had to try the abandoned railroad bridge.

She swung the pickup through the plowed area, turning left when she reached the road. Where was she going to find the thing? Russ had told her it was a half-mile upstream from the trail, but that didn’t necessarily translate into a half-mile drive up the road. There must have been train tracks leading straight toward the river, but where were they?

Ahead of her, high-voltage lines crossed Route 137, sparking memories of the times she had navigated small planes by following the clearly visible paths maintained by electric companies. She slowed the truck, then pulled over onto the shoulder. Metal transmission towers marched in a receding line down a wide right-of-way through the forest. It vanished over a gentle rise that led, if she wasn’t mistaken, toward the river. The kill. She couldn’t see any train tracks under the snow, but there were clear marks of snowmobiles crisscrossing beneath the towers and there, ahead of her and to the right, tire tracks along what must be the electric company’s access road.

She fumbled with a dial on the steering column, engaging the four-wheel-drive. She downshifted and rolled onto the snow, following the other tracks as closely as possible, praying hard that she wasn’t chasing after some die-hard fisherman or snowmobiling enthusiast.

The truck growled up the access road, crunching snow beneath its big tires, carrying her forward surely and steadily. As she crested the rise, it struck her that none of the squad cars would be able to follow her. Hot prickles ran up the insides of her arms and she bit her lip. Some of the officers had better have four-wheel-drive vehicles or she was going to be in a world of trouble. She refused to think about the possibility that the police might not be following her at all.

The right-of-way, and the tire tracks, curved gently to the left, disappearing from view in the thick stand of trees. She accelerated slightly, the rear tires whining a complaint. As she rounded the bend, the landscape opened startlingly before her: blue sky, white snow, black water. Dark green bridge. Dark blue Ford Explorer.

She slammed on the brakes, sending the truck into a skid that ended with a jarringly abrupt stop. She almost fell from the cab in her frantic need to get out. She could see him, perhaps halfway along the span of the bridge, silhouetted against the sky. Well-bundled up against the cold, carrying something.

“Mr. Fowler!” she screamed. Running through the snow to the bridge was like running in a nightmare, slipping and dragging and making almost no headway despite the efforts that left sweat running down her spine. “Stop!”

He did. She thrashed through the remaining few feet to the bridge and staggered onto the rails. She saw why he had been walking so slowly: the train track was supported on a huge trestle but open to the air. On either side of the railbed was a riveted steel walkway and parapet, something the rail workers must have crossed on decades ago. Between the scanty patches of snow that hadn’t been scoured off by the wind, she could see patches of rust eating away the green-painted metal. She decided to stay right where she was, on the half-foot-wide wooden ties.

Vaughn Fowler was facing her now, cradling a blanket-wrapped bundle with one arm. “I can’t say I’m surprised to see you, Reverend,” he said, his voice carrying clearly through the cold air. “As president of the vestry, I’m disappointed in your performance so far. Way too much time spent on a situation that is out of your area of concern.”

She heard nothing from inside the blanket. Shouldn’t the baby be crying after all this? She pressed her lips tightly together. Dear God, don’t let him be already dead. “My area of concern? It’s the people around me. The McWhorters. The Burnses.” She picked her way along another few crossbars, moving closer. “Your son. Your grandson. You.” She looked steadily at Fowler, searching his face for something she could reach with her words. “Let me help you.”

“Very comforting, coming from a woman who tried to kill me last night.” He held out a hand. “Stop there, Reverend.”

She stopped, her arms spread for balance. Beneath her feet, she could see the kill, black and glittering in the pale sunlight. Chunks of ice bobbed lazily in the slow current. “Are you going to try to shoot me again?” she asked.

Fowler laughed, a short, coughing sound. “Hardly. I lost my side arm when you ambushed me. Carried that Colt for twenty years, and lost it to a damn woman. A priest to boot. Damn, I liked that piece.” He narrowed his eyes. “You were good out there. I’m lucky to have survived with my feet and my balls intact.”

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you—”

“Bullshit. You meant to hurt me, and you did. I underestimated you, and I paid the price. Don’t apologize for being successful.”

“No, sir.” The acknowledgment was an automatic response to his tone of voice. She sure wasn’t going to reach him by appealing to him as a priest, but maybe she could engage him officer to officer. The longer they kept talking, the more likely it was Russ and his men could find them. “I thought taking your boots and flashlight to keep you from reaching your vehicle was good strategy, but obviously, it didn’t work.”

“I had a penlight in my snowmobile suit. Always carry backup equipment when you’re in the woods. As soon as I’d assessed the situation, I stopped chasing after you and headed straight for my snowmobile.”

“But . . . your feet . . .”

“Were damn cold by the time I reached my friend’s cabin. However, I was wearing insulated hunting socks. Next time you try to cripple someone, make sure you leave him with bare feet. Better still, just split his head open.”

“Sir, my objective was to slow you down, not to kill you.”

“Stupid objective. The only way to deal with an enemy is to take him out. Period. Otherwise, you’ll never know when he’ll jump back up and bite you in the ass.”

“Like Darrell McWhorter?”

His face crinkled in disgust. “Slimy bastard. Called me up and said he’d tell the cops about Wesley and his daughter if I didn’t pay him off. Ten thousand dollars. He thought Wes had killed her and he was still willing to overlook it for money. What a scumbag.”

A raven flew past the bridge, cawing loudly. She took another step along the railroad ties. “How did you persuade him to come with you to Albany, sir?”

“I told him I’d pay if he’d collect any telltale evidence from the girl’s apartment and hand it over. I knew he’d jump at the chance to find something more substantial to hold over my head.” He gave her a look that invited her to agree that the late Darrell McWhorter was an idiot. “I planned on getting rid of him in Albany; as it happened, a better opportunity presented itself.”

“So that was you who rifled through Katie’s things.”

He tucked his head in assent. “With some of last year’s Halloween costume stuck to my face. Crude, but effective.”

From below, Clare could hear the flat lapping of the river against its rock-and-snow-covered banks. Would dropping Cody in also qualify as crude, but effective? She glanced at the bundle in Fowler’s arm.

“Oh, he’s alive. The little bastard fell sound asleep in my truck, can you believe it?”

“What is it you’re looking for here, Colonel? What outcome are you after?” She let a note of challenge creep into her voice. “Wesley’s already off the hook for the murders. What do you hope to accomplish out here?”

“I’m trying to save my son from himself. He’s already fumbled badly, getting that girl pregnant in the first place and then not insisting she have an abortion. He was going to walk away from everything, just because she decided at the last minute she didn’t want to give it up. Can you believe that?”

Clare bit her lip. “There’s no chance of that now, though, is there? You took care of that.”

“You mean the girl? I didn’t set out to eliminate her. If she had just taken the money I’d offered—Christ, she could have paid her way through the state school and had a nest egg left over! She was too stupid to do what was best for her.”

“Some people might say she was too principled to trade money for her child.”

“Bullshit. She saw an opportunity to trap a boy from a decent family who could be counted on to earn a good paycheck.” He glared at her. “If Wes had quit school to marry her, if he takes on her—” he glanced at the blankets in his arm, “—kid, he’d regret it for the rest of his life. I’m not going to let that happen.” His face tightened. “Wes is still too soft, yet. It’s up to me to protect him.”

“By killing his son and sending his father to death row? Do you really think that’s going to protect him? That he won’t regret it for the rest of his life?” She stepped toward Fowler, never taking her eyes off him, feeling out the ties through her boots. “Wesley’s ready to sign the boy over to the Burnses. He told me so himself.” She balanced on one leg, bumping her other boot against a wooden tie until she had a foothold. “He’s a good kid. Sensitive, responsible, caring. You can stop this right here without damaging him any further.” She stretched out her arms. “Give me the baby. The other two you . . . eliminated, those were on the spur of the moment, unplanned, right? That’s manslaughter. You can plead to diminished capacity or temporary insanity or . . . or . . . something.”

She kept her arms open. Her chest and throat ached. From a distance, she could hear the sound of a motor. A snowmobile, maybe. She wanted it to be help. She wasn’t up to this. She couldn’t do this all by herself.

You aren’t all by yourself, the thought came, from inside and outside all at once. She breathed in sharply. “Give me the baby, Colonel. Don’t burden the rest of Wesley’s life with the knowledge that he was the reason you did this terrible thing.”

He frowned, pressing his lips together. Considering. Poised between two ties, she held herself absolutely still, arms burning, reaching.

Behind them, the sound of an engine cut through the air. Fowler looked past her. “Ah. Reinforcements,” he said. He hefted the blanket-wrapped parcel higher.

Clare couldn’t look back. She heard thudding doors and the faint squawk of a walkie-talkie. “They don’t change anything,” she said. “This is still your call.”

“Vaughn.” Russ’s voice was measured, temperate. The sound of it was like seeing the landing lights at the end of a long night’s flight. “How ’bout I walk onto this bridge and we all try to resolve this situation?”

Fowler raised his bundle higher. From within the blanket, the baby began to cry, short, sharp squalls demanding attention. “Stay where you are, Chief, or I toss this into the kill.”

“No!” Clare’s hands clutched around empty air. Beneath them, she heard the motor coming closer, a spluttering roar.

“You’re not going to walk away from this, Vaughn. That’s a police boat covering the water. The state troopers will be moving men in on the other side of the kill, and they’re going to be bringing a sharpshooter with them. Give the baby to Clare, and let’s all get out of the cold. Your son is waiting to see you. He’s worried sick about you.”

Fowler shook his head. “I didn’t plan to walk away from this, Chief. I knew when I moved decisively to save my son from dropping out and marrying that trailer trash that I would have to be an acceptable loss.”

“No. Colonel.” Clare moved forward another shaky step. “Think what you’ll be doing to your family.”

“I have. I’m saving them the embarrassment of a trial and incarceration. Don’t you think I considered how this would look? No one understands sacrifice these days. No one appreciates what it is to put your duty to your family or your service first.”

In her peripheral vision, Clare caught a glimpse of the boat, motoring slowly upstream toward the bridge. She took another step. Fowler began to unwind the blanket from the wailing infant. She knew, at that moment, he would toss Cody into the kill, no matter what they said or did. She unzipped her parka and peeled it off. “Give me the baby, Colonel,” she said, holding out her coat. “You can put him right in here.” She balanced on a single tie, feet together, pressing down on the back of one rubber boot. “I promise you, I’ll see that the Burnses get him. He won’t interfere with Wesley’s schooling ever again.” Her stockinged foot slid free. She wavered, one-legged, almost losing her balance. She didn’t take her eyes off Vaughn Fowler’s face.

He looked down at the angry baby kicking in the crook of his arm. “He’s such a responsible kid, that’s part of the problem.” Clare found her footing again. Her toes curled over the edge of the tie as she lifted her other leg and shook the boot free. It hit one of the ties and fell off her foot. A moment later, she heard a splash.

“Give her the baby, Vaughn, and let’s get out of here. Your son needs you.” Russ’s voice sounded much closer now. She could feel him, radiating strength and reassurance, almost close enough to reach back and touch.

Vaughn drew a deep breath, as if savoring the taste of the air. “Wes is the fifth generation of my family to attend West Point, did I tell you that?”

Clare nodded. “Yes, sir, you did.”

He looked into her eyes, soberly, measuring. “It’s a good thing to live as a soldier.” With a shrug and a twist of his arms, he tossed Cody over the parapet.

Russ shouted, “Get down, Clare!” as the parka tumbled from her arms. She went over the side before she had a chance to think about it, her shins scraping the iron, the wind tearing up her eyes and blinding her, and then she was under the water, and it was cold, cold beyond any definition of cold, burning her skin like acid. She followed her bubbles up to the pale sunshine, broke the surface, unable to breathe, the shock of it seizing her lungs. She heard yelling, a motor gunning, shots. It was hard to think, impossible to focus. She couldn’t see Cody. She gulped in air with a sob, forcing her chest to work, went under again. The boat motor throbbed through her nerves. Her body felt like one huge tooth ache. She spiraled through the clear water. There was a flash of white ahead, but when she broke surface, it was a clump of snow and ice. Someone was yelling her name. She went under again, the ache intensifying, although she couldn’t have imagined it could get any worse.

She saw him. Floating so near the surface his ice-blue sleeper was dappled with sunlight. She stroked through the water, kicking against the drag of her skirt, time slipping past her like bubbles, until she reached the tiny form. She surfaced again, hauling Cody up with her, holding his head out of the water one-handed while she tread in place. “Here!” she screamed. “I’ve got him! Here!”

The sound of the boat was everywhere, but she was still surprised when she turned and it was there; cutting engines, sliding alongside her. Hands reached out, so many hands, and she held up Cody and let him be whisked out of view. She reached for the side, but she was too weak to hold on. More hands grasped her, grabbed her arms, and she was hauled in like a fish, flopping and twitching on the bottom of the boat until someone tossed a thermal blanket over her and rolled her in it. Through the press of parkas, she saw a man half-dressed in diving gear resuscitating Cody, his mouth covering half the baby’s face.

“Breathe.”

“For Christ’s sake, take us over to the shore so we can pick up the chief, he’s going to freeze to death.”

“Get on that radio to County Hospital, tell ’em we’re coming in with possible hypothermias.”

“Miss, I have another blanket. Can you get your clothes off under there?”

“What about the perp’s body? Are we fishing him out?”

Cody’s tiny fist jerked in the air. The diver pulled away, rolling the baby onto his side. Cody coughed, vomited up a stream of water, and began to cry. Everyone cheered except Clare, who squeezed her eyes shut against hot tears.

The boat bumped and scraped against rock. She opened her eyes in time to see Russ wading through the water. The boat tipped hard to one side as he heaved himself in. “Come back here, Chief,” the voice beside her said. “I’ve got a blanket for you. Jeez, you tore the hell out of your pants, didn’t you? What the hell were you thinking of? We had them.”

Clare focused on the man who had been helping her, and recognized Kevin Flynn. The engine kicked in again, pulling them steadily away from the shore, gaining speed as they motored downstream.

“Shove it over, Kevin,” Russ said, his voice thick. The young officer handed him a blanket and carefully shifted down the bench. Russ wrapped himself from the waist down and sat heavily. “Lyle, you notify the hospital we’re coming in?”

“I sure did, Chief.”

“Call the staties, let ’em know we’re going to need a diving team and a water search to recover Fowler’s body.”

“What happened?” Clare asked, her teeth clicking together.

“You mean after you did your swan dive? Fowler fired on me.”

“Oh, no. Oh no. Were you the one who—”

“No, my gun was still holstered. Mark was my backup. He’s a damn good shot.” He shook his head. “Fowler was hit. He went between the ties.” He looked at her, his eyes so deep she thought she could dive in and touch the bottom of him.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

“For Fowler or for Mark?” He raised a hand. “No, don’t tell me. I know. For both of them.” He took off his glasses and wiped them on a corner of the blanket. “When I saw you go over the edge like that . . .” He shook his head. “I took the fast route down by sliding down that goddamn slate embankment. My ass is going to feel that one for a month. ’Scuse my French.” He threw his arm around Clare and pulled her blanket-wrapped form tightly to his side. “Jesus Christ, Clare, what were you thinking of? Do you have any idea how fast you can die in water that cold? We had a diver standing by, for chrissakes.”

“I didn’t know it was going to be that cold,” she said, shaking uncontrollably against him. She jerked her chin toward the squalling baby. “It was worth it.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I guess it was.” He smiled a bit. Then he started to laugh softly.

“What?”

“Damn, I sure had you pegged when I said you jumped in feet-first without thinking . . .”

CHAPTER 31

At twilight, the small parking area behind St. Alban’s was already filled. Well, he should have expected that on Christmas Eve. Russ parked in the lot across the street, collected his package, and trudged across Elm toward the Gothic double doors hung with wreaths. The pavilion in the square was glowing with Christmas lights and the shining windows of the last stores open, and for a moment he could have been back in 1962, when everything in his world was safe and understandable. Where businesses never closed and marriages were forever and no one ever died.

He shook his head at his sentimentality and hauled on one of the elaborately cast bronze door pulls. Inside the church, his glasses fogged over, blinding him. The smell of pine and beeswax filled the shadowy air. From the choir stalls a soloist was singing, then stopping, going back and repeating her phrase.

“Hey. Chief Van Alstyne. Are you here to help, too?”

He popped his glasses back on. A startlingly well-scrubbed Kristen McWhorter faced him, carrying a box of tall white candles.

“Kristen. Hi. I’m surprised to see you here.”

She jiggled the box. “Reverend Clare talked me into helping with the decorating. I’m sprigging the candles. Don’t ask.”

He grinned. “Okay. How is everything?”

“Pretty good. The funerals were hard. Hard to get through. But knowing what happened to her helped. I still haven’t spoken with Wes Fowler. Which I can understand. But I have been seeing Cody.” She smiled. “The Burnses have asked me to be a godmother, isn’t that cool? He’s going to be baptized here in January.”

“That’s very cool, yeah. I’m glad for you.” He glanced around the church. A woman was twining greenery around huge standing candelabras and an elderly man was wedging votive lights into recesses in the windowsills. “Where’s the Reverend?”

“I heard her muttering something about coffee. I’d check in her office.”

The hallway was dim and quiet. He knocked on her door frame. “Anyone in?”

“Russ! Well, isn’t this a nice surprise. If you’re here for the seven o’clock service, you’re a few hours early.” Clare rose from one of her odd-looking admiral’s chairs, elegant in a tailored black blouse and long skirt. “Let me get you a cup of coffee.” She poured from her Thermos into a Virginia Seminary mug. The coffee was hot and sweet and tasted of cinnamon. He dropped his package on the shabby love seat and laid his parka over it before sitting down.

“I meant to call when I saw the notice about Fowler’s funeral in the paper.”

“I didn’t officiate. I asked Clifton Whiting from St. Ann’s in Saratoga. I thought my presence would be more of a hurt than a help.” She looked into her coffee. “I can’t help but think that if I’d been a little more on the ball—”

“You could have stopped Fowler from destroying himself? Someone once told me you can’t take responsibility for everyone around you. Seems like a pretty smart observation.”

She smiled crookedly at him. “I should have had you around to put in a good word for me when the vestry called me on the carpet to explain what had been going on. I don’t know who shocked them more, me or Vaughn Fowler.”

He slipped off his glasses and polished them on his scarf. “If you need me to let them know what a genuine help you were—”

“No, no. They just need time to readjust their worldview. I’m taking advantage of the confusion to push forward my young mothers’ mentoring program. For which, by the way, I have the support of the Burnses, who have forgiven me for narcing on Geoff’s drunk driving episode.”

“Let me get my glasses back on. Whenever I think about Geoff as a father, I get a headache.”

“It’s given him a sense of humor. He told me they were signing Cody up for infant swim classes.” Her eyes glinted. “At least, I think he was trying to be funny.”

He almost snorted coffee out his nose. He put the mug down. “I’m really here to give you this.” He pulled the wide, foil-wrapped package from beneath his coat. “Happy Holidays.”

“For me? You shouldn’t have!” She tore into the paper eagerly. “Oh, Russ.” She started laughing. “Thank you. They’re just what I needed.” She held up the waterproof, insulated, chain-tread-soled boots. “How did you know?”

He laughed. “Lucky guess?” She turned the boots back and forth, admiring them.

“I love them.” She dropped them into the box. “I’ll wear them tonight after midnight mass.”

“It must get crazy for you on Christmas Eve. Everyone else is having a holiday and you’re working your tail off.”

“Like a cop.”

“Like a cop.”

“It easy for me to lose all sense of what I’m here for and turn into this grumpy, harried martinet, obsessing with getting everything done right and on time. That’s why I’m hiding out in my office.”

“Oh. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Oh, no, I’m glad you came. I haven’t seen you since they hustled you off to get your backside dressed at the hospital.” The last light of the sunset was flooding the room, from windows and mirrors. Her hair, caught up in its usual twist, had already come loose, strands the color of gingerbread and fire floating around her face.

“Seems like a long time, yeah.”

“I’ve really missed having you to talk with.” Her words hung in the air.

“Me, too.” There was a long pause. He had a sudden, lung-constricting conviction that coming here had been a mistake, that he had to leave right away, had to climb back into his truck and go home. “I ought to be going.”

“Oh.” She looked at the coffee mug in her hand. “Of course.” She placed it carefully on the desk. “Thank you. Thank you for my favorite present.” They both stood. She reached out and they clasped hands, squeezing hard. She smiled brightly. “Merry Christmas, Russ.”

He pulled her to him without conscious thought and she came, settling against him, their arms wrapped around each other. He held her pressed tightly against his heart. “Merry Christmas,” he said into her hair. It smelled of beeswax and cinnamon.

She looked up at him. Her eyes were very large.

“Clare,” he said.

She swallowed.

“Clare . . .”

She shook her head. “No.”

He touched her face. She closed her eyes and for a moment, pressed her cheek into his palm. Then she opened her eyes and stepped backwards, breaking his hold. He reached for her. She threw up both hands, a barricade against him. “Leave. Now. Go home to your wife.”

He let his hands drop, heavy and useless. “I wouldn’t—”

“Yes, you would. And God help me, so would I. Go. Please.”

He nodded, turned, walked away, through the dim hall, through the scent of pine and beeswax, through the haunting voice of the soloist, singing. “Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone. Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow. In the bleak midwinter, long ago.”

Around the square, the remaining shops were closing, employees chattering down the sidewalks, last-minute shoppers slipping and sliding under the weight of bags and boxes. The fuzzy candy canes and reindeer, the fat lightbulbs, everything the same as it always was, as it always had been. Everything the same. Everything different. Everything.

He climbed into his truck and headed home.

Read on for an excerpt from

Julia Spencer-Fleming’s next mystery:

A Fountain Filled with Blood

Now available in hardcover from St. Martin’s

Minotaur!

The yahoos came by just after the dinner party let out. A few young punks—three or four—picked out as streaks of white in the cab and bed of an unremarkable-looking pickup. Emil Dvorak was tucking a bottle of wine under his arm and reaching to shake his hosts’ hands when he heard the horn, haloowing down Route 121 like a redneck hunting cry, and the truck flashed into view of the inn’s floodlights.

“Faggots!” Several voices screamed. “Burn in hell!” More obscene slurs were swallowed up in the night as the truck continued past. From their run in the back, the Inn’s dogs began barking in response, high-pitched and excited.

“Goddamnit,” Ron Handler said.

“Did you see the license plate this time?” Stephen Obrowski asked.

His partner shook his head. “Too fast. Too dark.”

“Has this happened before?” Emil shifted the bottle under his other arm. The Inn’s outdoor spotlight left him feeling suddenly exposed, his car brilliantly illuminated, his hosts’ faces clearly visible, as his must have been. His hand, he noticed, was damp. “Have you reported it?”

“It started a little after we opened for the season,” Steve said. “Once a week, maybe less. We’ve told the police. The Inn’s on the random patrol list now.”

“Not that that helps,” Ron said. “The cops have better things to do than to catch gay-bashers out cruising for a good time. The only reason we got a few drive-bys in a patrol car is that the Inn is bringing in the all-mighty tourist dollar.”

“Tourism keeps Millers Kill afloat,” Emil said, “but Chief Van Alstyne’s a good man. He wouldn’t tolerate that trash no matter what business they’re targeting.”

“I better call the station and let them know we’ve been harrassed again. Thank God our guests have already retired.” Ron squeezed Emil’s upper arm. “Thanks for coming. I’m sorry dinner had to end on such a bad note.” He disappeared behind the Inn’s ornate double door.

Steve peered up the road. “Are you going to be okay getting back home? I don’t like the idea of you all alone on the road with those thugs out there.”

Emil spread his arms. “Look at me. I’m a middle-aged guy driving a Chrysler with M.D. plates. What could be more mainstream?” He dropped his hand on Steve’s shoulder and shook him slightly. “I’ll be fine. Anyone comes after me, I’ll break his head open with this fine Chardonnay.”

“Don’t you dare. That bottle’s worth more than you on the open market.”

Emil laughed as they made their good-nights. Tucking the bottle under the passenger seat of his LeBaron convertible, he considered putting the top back up. He sighed. He knew he was getting old when a couple of drunken kids yelling out of the darkness made him this nervous. To hell with them. It wasn’t worth a twenty-minute struggle with the roof or missing fresh air blowing around him on a hot June night.

The high-Victorian architecture of the inn dwindled behind him as he drove toward home. Route 121 was two country lanes bordered on one side by Millers Kill, the river that gave the town its name, and by dairy farms and corn fields on the other. In the dark of the new moon, the maples and sycamores lining the sides of the road were simply shades of gray on black, so the round outline of his headlights, picking out the violent green of the summer leaves, made him think of scuba diving in the Carribean, black blinkers around his peripheral vision, gloom and color ahead.

Twin blurs of red and white darted into view and for a second his mind saw coralfish. He blinked, and they resolved themselves into rear lights. Backing into the road, slewing sidewise. Christ! He slammed on his brakes and instinctively jerked the wheel to the right, knowing a heartbeat too late that was wrong, wrong, wrong as the car sawed around in a swooping, tail-forward circle and crunched to a stop with a jolt that whipsawed Dvorak’s head from the steering wheel to his seat.

The smell of the Chardonnay was everywhere, sickening in excess. Steve would kill him for breaking that bottle. His ears rung. He drew a deep breath and caught it, stopped by the ache in his chest. Contusion from the shoulder restraint. He touched the back of his neck. Probably cervical strain as well. Behind him, some awful modern rap song thumped over a gaggle of voices. He turned off the engine. Better go see if anyone needed any medical attention before he took down the driver’s insurance and sued him into next week. The idiot.

A door thumped shut at the same time he heard the hard flat thwack of shoes or boots hitting the macadam. Glass crunched.

“Look what we got!” A young voice, high-pitched with excitement. “We caught us a faggot!”

Another thump, more crunching, several whoops almost drowning out the stifling beat of the bass. Dvorak’s hand froze on the door handle. The idiot. He was the idiot. He lunged for his cell phone, had the power on, and actually hit a nine and a one before the blow hit across his forearm, tumbling the phone from his grasp and making him gasp from the flaring pain. A long arm reached down to scoop the phone off the passenger seat.

There were hands on his jacket, tugging him sideways, and he watched as the cell phone arced through the edge of his headlights into the thick young corn. “Queerbait! You like to suck dick? You like little boys?”

He twisted against the hands, groping for his car keys, his heart beating twice as fast as the sullen song, thinking he could still get out of this, still get away, until one of them hit him in the temple hard, not a fist, he thought, as his vision grayed and the keyring jingled out of reach.

In front of him, the headlights illuminated a swath of achingly green corn, cut off from the shoulder of the road by a sagging fence of barbed wire twisted around rough posts. His door was yanked open, and he wanted to think of Paul, to think of his children, but the only thing in his head was how the fence looked like the one on the cover of Time, like the one Matthew Shepard died on, and he was going to die now, too, and it was going to hurt more than anything.

“Comere, faggot,” one of them said as he was dragged from his seat. And the pain began.

“This stuff is going to kill us all!”

“Why are we having this meeting? This problem was supposed to have been resolved back in seventy-seven.”

“I want to know if my grandchildren are safe!”

The mayor of Millers Kill squeezed the microphone base as if he could choke off the rising babel with one hand. “People, please. Please! Let’s try to keep some sense of order here! I know it’s hot and I know you’re worried. Skiff and I will answer your questions the best we can. Meanwhile, sit down, raise your hand, and wait your turn.” Jim Cameron glared at his constituents until the more excitable ones grudgingly lowered themselves back into their over-warm metal folding chairs.

The Reverend Clare Fergusson, priest of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, slid sideways an inch in her own chair. She had come to her first alderman’s meeting with the nursing director of the Millers Kill Infirmary, and though she was glad for the expert commentary, Paul Foubert was a good six-feet-four and close to three hundred pounds. He not only spread across his undersized chair onto hers, he also radiated heat. She pulled at her clerical collar in a useless attempt to loosen it. She was sitting next to a giant hot-water bottle on the last and stickiest night of June.

“Yes. The chair recognizes Everett Daniels.”

A gangly, balding man stood up. “Back in seventy-six when they started making such a flap about PCBs, we were told we didn’t have anything to worry about because we were upstream from the factories in Fort Edward and Hudson Falls where they used the stuff. Are you telling us it’s now migrating upstream from the Hudson into the Millers Kill?”

“They did find elevated levels of PCB in our river, Everett. Now obviously, water doesn’t flow backwards. But we are awful close to the core contamination sites and our river joins up with the Hudson just a couple miles from where we’re sitting. The DEP folks don’t know yet if the stuff is coming into the Kill from the wetlands or groundwater or what.”

A woman’s voice cracked through the air. “Why don’t you tell the truth? The stuff is coming from that damn storage dump we allowed in the quarry back in nineteen-seventy! And that new resort development is bringing up the chemical and letting it run straight downhill into town lands!”

“Mrs. Van Alstyne, I asked that everyone raise a hand to be recognized!”

Clare jerked in her seat. The only Van Alstyne she knew in town was Russ Van Alstyne, the chief of police. His wife was supposed to be gorgeous. She made a futile swipe at the damp pieces of hair that had fallen out of her twist and craned her neck for a better view.

A woman in her early seventies stood, sturdy as a fireplug and so short her tightly permed white hair barely cleared the head-tops around her. Clare tried to see the people sitting around. Where was Linda Van Alstyne?

“I was saying it back in Seventy and I’ll say it now, allowing that PCB dump was a big mistake. They said it was air-tight and leakproof and waved a chunk of money in front of the town council until the aldermen rolled over and said yes. Then they put the blasted thing in the old shale quarry, even though a high-school geology teacher, which you were at the time, Jim Cameron, could have told them shale was a highly permeable rock!” She turned her head to address her neighbors. “That means it leaks!”

“I protested against it too, Mrs. Van Alstyne,” the mayor said.

Clare’s mental fog cleared away. It wasn’t Russ’s wife. “That’s his mother” she said to herself. Paul looked at her curiously. She felt her cheeks grow warmer.

“The state cleaned up that site in seventy-nine.” Mayor Cameron continued. “Last tests show traces of PCB in the quarry, but they’re at acceptable levels.”

“Of course they are! The blasted stuff leaked away into the bedrock. Now comes along BWI Development and gives us the same song and dance, this time promising lots of money from the tourists and lots of jobs and what does the board do? Roll over and hand ’em a permit to start plowing and blasting over fifty acres of Landry property. It’s been three months they’ve been working and suddenly we find PCB in the Dewitt Elementary playground. In a playground!”

“Can we just stop the hysterics and stick to the facts!?” An angular blonde stood near the front row. In contrast to the Wednesday night casual dress of the rest of the crowd, she wore a suit so sharply cut it looked bulletproof. “Before we ever started construction, we had to get a permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection. It took them two years to grant it. Two years! They tested the quarry, they tested the water, they tested the damn trees, for all I know. The PCBs are at acceptable levels at the resort site. Acceptable levels. There may be more of the stuff in the river, but there’s no reason to act as if my property is some sort of Three Mile Island!”

“Goddammit, Peggy, will you just wait your turn?”

She rounded on the mayor. “I came here tonight because I was told there was a motion to suspend construction due to the so-called PCB crisis.” She pointed toward the aldermen’s table. “My property was certified by the DEP. I’ve provided you with their environmental impact statements, which, if you bother to read, clearly state the development is within parameters approved by New York State. I have also provided you with copies of our zoning approval and our construction permits, documents you, gentlemen, issued only six months ago!”

The mayor turned away from the microphone and leaned over the wide wooden table. The four aldermen shoved in close, to hear whatever it was he was saying. They were shuffling papers like blackjack dealers. Clare nudged Paul. “Who’s the woman?” she whispered.

“Peggy Landry. She owns a huge chunk of land northwest of the town. She’s been trying to develop it for years, but she never had the wherewithal to do anything more than plow a few roads in. The only money she made off it came from paintball groups and back-to-nature nuts. You know, people who scoff at amenities like toilets, showers, or cleared land for pitching tents.” He rolled his eyes. “She got a group out of Baltimore interested in the parcel a year or so ago. Before you came. They do spas, luxury resorts, that sort of thing. It was big news at the time because of the prospect of jobs for the town, of course. I didn’t realize they had already—”

Jim Cameron straightened up. “Application papers of Landry Properties, Inc., and BWI Development, a limited partnership,” he read from a sheaf of papers in his hand. “Okay, Peggy, the town isn’t going to suspend your construction permits.” Several in the crowd booed at this. Several others cheered. The mayor frowned. “I said keep it down! Look, our lawyer tells us we don’t have the authority to stop properly permitted projects unless the state rules it is, in fact, violating DEP standards.”

“What about the possible release of more contaminants by the development!” Mrs. Van Alstyne said. “How much of that poison is stored in the rock, waiting to be let out when they start blasting? Anything they let loose is going to wash straight down the mountain into the town and the river!”

“Who’s going to pay for the clean-up?” someone asked from the crowd. “Seems like the Landrys will be making a pretty penny and we’ll be left holding the bill.”

Jim Cameron held up his hands. “People, if we can’t stick to the rule of order, I’m calling this whole meeting off!”

A man stood up next to Peggy Landry, who was glaring at Mrs. Van Alstyne with enough venom to have caused a lesser woman to collapse back into her seat. “Mr. Mayor? May I say a few words?”

The mayor looked pathetically grateful that someone was sticking to Roberts’ Rules. “Yes. The chair recognizes . . .”

“Bill Ingraham. BWI Development.” Cameron gestured to him to continue. Ingraham was thickly-set, of middle height and middle years, with the sunburned skin of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors. He looked more like a plumbing contractor than a luxury spa developer to Clare’s eye, but then, she had never really met any luxury spa developers. “My partner and I—stand up, John, let the folks here get a look at you—” A smoothly dressed corporate type stood, waved unenthusiastically, and vanished back into his seat. “John and I are here to create a new resort, the best cross between the old Adirondack mountain retreats and an up-to-the-minute health spa. We want to build this because we think it’ll make us a whole lot of money.” There was a snort of laughter, quickly stifled, from the crowd. “I also think it’ll make your town a whole lot of money, because we see this as a destination resort, not a place to stay overnight while your visitor heads over to Saratoga during the day. This is gonna mean money spent in your town and jobs for people who live here, year-round jobs because this is gonna be a year-round resort.” There was a scattering of applause across the town hall. “John and I are putting our money where our mouth is in more ways than one. We’re sponsoring the Fourth of July road race this year and we’ve got plans for a skiing meet at one of the local mountains this winter. Eventually, we want to support a special event in each of the four seasons.” He rubbed his hands together theatrically. “Give those tourists a little incentive to get them into town and loosen their purse strings.”

There was even more laughter than there had been applause. Ingraham paused for a moment, and then went on. “I like this area. Don’t want to see it polluted any more than you do. And I’ll be frank with you. Our budget for the Algonquin Waters Resort and Spa does not include the costs of coming into compliance with the DEP. We bought into the project based on the work Peggy had already done with the permitting. So here’s how we’re gonna handle it. If you all want to call in the state to retest out site because PCB levels have been rising several miles away, go ahead. But if the ruling goes against us, we’re shutting down. In my experience, once the government gets its teeth into things, it doesn’t let go until you’ve gotten a spot cleaner than it ever was originally. We don’t have the time or money for that.”

“What?” Peggy Landry turned to Ingraham, clutching his arm. “You can’t—” The rest of what she had to say was lost as she sat down, hauling him down with her.

“Huh. It’ll certainly spoil her plans if the deal falls through,” Paul said. He shook his head. “Being an Adirondack land baron just isn’t what it used to be.” Throughout the room, rule-abiding citizens waved their hands in the air and rule-ignoring ones called out questions.

Out of the corner of her eye, Clare caught the movement of the big double-door swinging open. A tall man in a brown and tan uniform slipped through. He paused by the door, unobtrusive despite his size, and scanned the crowd. Clare quickly looked back at the front of the room, where a redhead in a nurse’s jacket was talking about the effects of PCBs. Clare had seen Russ Van Alstyne rarely, and mostly from a distance, since last December, when they had first struck up a friendship while unraveling the mystery surrounding an infant abandoned on the steps of St. Alban’s. It had been so easy, to talk and laugh and just be herself with him, without worrying about that man-woman thing because, after all, he was married. Very married, as she had told her church secretary. It still smarted that she had been so completely unaware of her own emotions all the while. She had been Saul on the road to Damascus, oblivious until a moment’s revelation struck her and she realized she had fallen for him. It was embarrassing, that’s what it was. It was embarrassing and something she was going to get over.

When Clare glanced back at him, he was looking straight at her. Even across the room she could see the summer sky–blue of his eyes glinting beneath his glasses. Her face heated up as he continued to look at her, his thin lips quirking into something like a smile. She pasted a pleasant expression on her face and gave him a small wave. He glanced next to her, frowned, and then looked back at her. He pointed and mouthed something. What? She shrugged. He pointed again, more emphatically. She raised her eyebrows and jerked a thumb toward Paul Foubert, who was absorbed in whatever the nurse was saying. Russ nodded.

“I think Russ Van Alstyne wants to speak with you,” she said.

“Hmm? The chief? Where? I didn’t know he was at this meeting.”

“He wasn’t. Wednesday’s his regular patrol night. He’s just come in.”

“You know his schedule?” Paul looked at her, bemused.

“I’m good with schedules. Natural gift. Go on.”

Paul rose with a groan. “Probably one of the Alzheimer’s patients wandered off again.”

Clare resisted the urge to follow the nursing home director, although she was unable to keep herself from swiveling around to see what was happening. Russ looked serious. Grim. Washed-out beneath the fluorescent lights, despite his tan. He removed his steel-rimmed glasses when Paul reached him and took hold of the larger man’s shoulder, drawing him close. A thread of unease coiled through Clare’s stomach, then tightened sickeningly as Paul abruptly twisted away from Russ and sagged against the wall.

She was out of her chair and excusing herself down the crowded aisle by the time Russ caught her eye again, urgently jerking his head in a summons. Paul was leaning on the town-hall bulletin board, his face turned toward a pink paper announcing summer dump hours, his huge fists clenched and shaking.

“What is it?” she said quietly. “What’s wrong?”

“Emil,” Paul said. “Attacked.”

She looked up at Russ. “Emil?”

He put his glasses on. “Emil Dvorak. Our coroner.” His thin lips flattened. “A friend of mine. He was found a while ago on Route 121. Looks like his car hit something and went off the road.” Russ pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “He was attacked. Beaten bad. He’s in the Glens Falls Hospital right now.” He tilted his head toward Paul. “Emil is Paul’s, um, friend.”

“Dear God.” Clare pressed her hand against Paul’s shoulder, then pressed closer, draping her other arm across his back. “Oh, Paul. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” She had known Paul lived with someone, but he had never mentioned anyone by name in their conversations at the nursing home. She looked at Russ. “We came to the meeting together. I’ll take him to the hospital.”

“I can get there. I’m okay,” Paul said in a reedy voice, an oddly small sound coming from such a big man. Clare’s heart ached. He straightened up and looked around as if he had never seen the town hall before.

“No, Clare’s right. You shouldn’t try to drive, Paul.” Russ ran his hand through his shaggy brown hair. “I have to stop at the station.” He looked down at Clare. “Can you find the Glens Falls Hospital?” She nodded. “Okay, I’ll meet you there.”

Russ held the door open for them as Clare steered Paul out of the meeting hall. Despite the hot air rolling off the street below, she shivered as she caught Russ’s last, whispered direction: “Hurry.”