Through the Evil Days: A Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne Mystery

  She slid out from beneath the sheets and crossed to the window. It was blacker than black outside, but she could just see the snow piling up on the window ledge. She thought, for a moment, about leaving. She could sneak out now when the whole wide world was quiet. She was a Mohawk, her Pepe was always saying, and she could do anything. He had taught her to find the mossy side of a tree and to make a shelter of pine branches and leaves and how to orient by the North Star if she forgot her compass at home. But mostly he said if she was ever lost to stay put and stay warm and the park wardens would find her.

  She climbed back into bed. Besides, if she left, she wouldn’t see Mom. The police were keeping Mom away from her because they liked to boss people around and make themselves feel important. Except the lady police who had visited her in the hospital with Mrs. Schmidt the social worker. She was nice. She had given Mikayla a bear with a little badge sewn right in his shoulder. Mikayla had put her fire helmet on the bear after her class had visited the station. She had left the bear in her bedroom at Ted and Helen’s house.

  Her eyes went watery and she blinked a lot. She didn’t want to think about Ted and Helen’s house. Maybe if she read some more? She was reaching for the lamp when she heard a creak outside. She slid way down and tugged the covers up until they were nearly over her head. Go away, she thought. Go away, go away, go away.

  The door opened.

  SUNDAY, JANUARY 11

  1.

  The first thing Russ registered when he woke was warm. The heavy quilt was rucked up to his ears and he was wrapped around his wife, their legs tangled, one hand splayed over her rounded abdomen. The second thing was cold; his nose and brows and the top of his head twinging from the bite of the air. He should have put more wood in the stoves last night, but when they arrived back at the cabin it was as if an unspoken agreement lay between them to pack in at least one more night of honeymooning. They ate the stew that Clare had simmered on the stove all day and then made love with a desperate, grasping abandon that left them panting and sheened with sweat, the quilt and blankets kicked to the floor. The sex had wrung all the guilt and frustration out of Russ, and he had dropped into sleep as quickly and quietly as the snow falling outside.

  Beneath his hand, Clare’s belly bunched and moved in a muscular wave. Holy shit. He was torn between yanking his hand away and leaving it in place. Then the kicking started. He had never imagined what feet inside someone’s body might feel like, but there was no mistaking the sensation, light as it was, against his palm. The kid was jumping against Clare like she was a trampoline.

  Her hand covered his. “Mmm. Feel that?” Her voice was sleepy.

  “Yeah,” he whispered. “It’s … a little creepy. I mean, there’s something alive inside of you.”

  She laughed low. “Saw Alien a few too many times, did you?”

  “I guess so.” He paused, trying to articulate what was in his head. “You’re not going to have a miscarriage, are you?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “I guess I figured that. You’re already farther along than…” He took a deep breath. “This … is really going to happen. The baby.”

  “Yes, it is. On or about April twentieth.” She rubbed her hand along his forearm. “Does that make you feel any differently? About becoming a father?”

  Becoming a father. He thought of his own dad, and his grandfathers. His bum knee and his bullet scars. The kids he’d seen in the line of duty, scared or beaten or abused or old too soon. All the stuff he didn’t know—Christ, he had never even changed a diaper. The question was too big. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know how it makes me feel.”

  “Let me know when you figure it out, okay?”

  He buried his face in her hair instead of answering. They lay together in a not entirely comfortable silence until Clare said, “What’s that?”

  “What?”

  “That tick-ticking noise.”

  Now she mentioned it, he could hear it, too. Pinging and ticking and rattling. “Oh, crap.” He sat up and tossed off the covers. “It’s hailing.” Goosebumps swept over his skin. He shrugged on his robe and walked to the bedroom’s French doors. The small deck outside, which he had shoveled clear yesterday afternoon, was covered in a gravelly mix of slush and hailstones. More was falling from a leaden sky, thick wet flakes and hard icy pellets.

  “What’s it look like?” Clare asked, still burrowed beneath the quilts.

  “It’s slushing. And hailing. The temperature must be rising.” He crossed the freezing floor to where he had left the weather radio on the kitchen counter. “Probably going to turn into rain soon.”

  “Will you try to leave before then?”

  He started cranking the radio to power it up. “No. Safer to let the rain and the road crews clear the way first.”

  “In that case…” Her tone of voice made him turn around. She was half sitting, half sprawled against the pillows, the covers fallen around her thighs. “Why don’t you come back to bed and get warm?” The cold that was making his bare feet ache was doing wonderful things to her nipples. “Mmm?”

  Jesus. “Warm,” he said thickly. “Yeah.” He dropped the radio back onto the counter. Ice. Hail. Warm.

  2.

  Ice and hail. “Frigging wintry mix,” Kevin said, slowing the cruiser to a stop behind a line of cars cautiously creeping across the avenue into the Super Kmart parking lot. “We should’ve just taken my Aztek. It has four-wheel drive.”

  “Quit bitching.” Hadley had the laptop tilted toward her and was scrolling through the list of names and addresses Noble had uploaded this morning. “It’s not that bad.”

  “For a Californian, you’re awfully confident about driving in upstate New York weather.”

  “I didn’t grow up in California. I moved there after I left high school.” She paused. “Dropped out.”

  Kevin smiled a little. That was Hadley. Brutally honest, even when she was on the receiving end. Evidently, she misunderstood his expression, because she said, “I got my GED. Later.”

  “I’m not judging you.” The Buick in front of him finally decided it was safe to cross the intersection. Kevin made a slow left, trying to get a feel for the road surface. “My father never finished high school. State school, it was called in Ireland.”

  “Two streets and then a right,” she said, her eyes on the laptop. “Your dad is Irish? I mean, really Irish?”

  “Yep. He came to Boston with a bunch of friends back in the sixties. Great pay doing construction back then. My mom was going to college at St. Mary’s. They met and bam! Love at first sight.” He signaled and made the turn Hadley had indicated. “Well, love at first sight for him. She took a little longer to get on board.”

  “Okay, this is it. Here.”

  Kevin wedged the cruiser into the foot of the driveway and turned off the engine. “This looks too nice.” The house was a large two-story with a shoveled walk that was rapidly filling with slush and hailstones. Neatly trimmed yew bushes gaped open under the accumulating weight of the wet snow.

  Hadley sighed. “Probably another fake.” They had hit six homes already this morning, going off the license information Noble was collecting from various drugstore registries. Every one so far had turned out to be faked, the real ID copied with its picture replaced and birth dates fudged. All they had to show for a morning’s work was a bunch of worried civilians who now knew a lot more about identity theft. Hadley grabbed the pile of license printouts anyway. They put on their plastic-wrapped hats and parkas and trudged up to the door.

  The young man who opened the door was in T-shirt and sweats, his hair still rumpled from bed despite the fact that it was close to ten. Hadley looked at the papers in her hand. “Samuel McKenna?”

  The guy went white.

  “We have a few questions for you, Mr. McKenna. May we come in?” Kevin already had his hand on the door and was stepping over the threshold. The guy backed away. His eyes were huge. Hadley held up the printout so
Kevin could see the photo. This was him, all right. Young guy. Barely twenty. “You are Samuel McKenna?”

  The kid jerked his head up and down. Hadley shut the door behind her. In the sudden hush, Kevin could hear the drip-drip-drip of melting snow sliding off their covers. He took his off, and Hadley followed suit.

  “What…” The kid seemed unable to get the rest of the sentence out.

  “Mr. McKenna, your driver’s license was used as ID in multiple pharmacies around the area to purchase pseudoephedrine.”

  “Oh, shit!” The kid bent over. “Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit. I knew this was going to happen. I knew it.”

  Hadley looked at him, one eyebrow lifted.

  “I swear to God, I’m not a user. I never touch drugs. I don’t even drink. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.”

  Kevin looked back at her. No, this one wasn’t going to require their ace interrogation skills. “Mr. McKenna, is there a place we can sit down and talk?”

  The kid made a despairing noise and led them down a hallway lined with years of family photos. In the kitchen, he pulled out a chair and collapsed at the table. A half-eaten bowl of Cheerios sat on a place mat. Kevin sat. Hadley stood, blocking the doorway. “Mr. McKenna. Samuel.” Kevin hardened his voice enough to get the kid to look up at him. “Tell me about what you did.” He didn’t usually ask such open-ended questions, but he had a feeling this kid would spill his guts if Kevin said, “Boo.”

  “I was just trying to earn tuition money,” Samuel said. “I’m not a criminal. I just needed money for college. I’m already maxed out on federal loans, and I kept hearing horror stories about graduates becoming like indentured serfs to the private bank loans.” He waved his hand at the walls around them. “I couldn’t ask my parents, they’re stretched enough as it is—”

  “Samuel. How did you get started smurfing? Were you recruited? Who did you work with?”

  Samuel blinked. “My buddy Jason. His older brother was in high school with this girl—woman—who was running a group.”

  “Annie Johnson?”

  Samuel moaned. “Yes. Oh, shit, you already have her? Oh, shit.”

  “They hooked you up with Annie?”

  Samuel nodded. He looked as if he were about to cry. “She had the van and the money and everything. It was just buying cold medicine. It wasn’t going to hurt anyone!”

  Hadley broke in. “Samuel, did you ever hear Annie Johnson talk about her daughter?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I guess. A couple times. There was some problem. The kid wasn’t living with her.”

  “Her daughter was kidnapped from her foster home Friday.”

  Samuel’s eyes widened. “I don’t know anything about that!”

  “She’s just eight years old,” Hadley went on. It amazed Kevin how utterly pitiless she could sound without ever raising her voice. “A little girl. She has a medical condition that can kill her if she’s not found and given treatment.”

  “Oh my God.” Samuel did start to cry. “I didn’t know. All I did was ride around from store to store and buy the stuff. It wasn’t going to hurt anyone!”

  “Do you know where Annie Johnson might be if she were hiding her daughter?”

  “Uh,” he sniffled. “Her place. Her boyfriend’s place.”

  Kevin looked at Hadley. They had already ascertained that Travis Roy, who was also missing, had no fixed residence. “Where else?”

  “I don’t know!” Samuel paused. “Maybe the house in the country.”

  “The house in the country?”

  “That’s what Annie called it. She only mentioned it a few times. She had to make a delivery to the place in the country, she’d say.”

  “That was where they manufactured the meth?”

  The kid flinched away at the word. “I don’t know. Nobody told me what happened to the stuff after we bought it.”

  “Where is this house, Samuel?”

  “I don’t know. Someplace north or west of here, I think. Nobody told me anything. I didn’t want to know anything.”

  Hadley held up her sheaf of printouts and looked questioningly at Kevin. He nodded. “Samuel. Officer Knox here is going to show you a bunch of driver’s licenses. You’re going to tell us the real names of everyone pictured. Got that?” He stood up and let Hadley take his seat.

  As she went over each suspected smurfer, Kevin weighed the possibility of the meth house being Annie Johnson’s bolt-hole. Meth manufacturing was a smelly, dangerous business, prone to toxic chemical spills and explosions. Would Annie be careless enough to take her daughter there? Maybe. She wasn’t about to win any mother-of-the-year awards. On the other hand, the meth house wasn’t hers. It probably wasn’t her boyfriend’s, either. They were both working for someone else—someone financing the operation. Someone who wouldn’t want the attention a child’s kidnapping brought to his business. He couldn’t just cut Annie loose, though. If—when—she was caught, the first thing she’d do was roll over. Give the DA a bigger fish to fry. If her boss was smart, he’d realize this. So maybe he was keeping her and Mikayla under wraps.

  “Samuel. Who was Annie working for?”

  The kid looked up at him, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t think she was cooking meth herself. And she sure wasn’t able to afford the money for your shopping trips on her own. So who was behind her?”

  “She never said outright, but she mentioned one guy’s name a few times. Tim LaMar.”

  Hadley glanced up at Kevin, a pleased expression flashing across her face.

  “But he’s in jail,” Samuel said.

  “What?” Hadley asked.

  “If it’s the same guy Annie mentioned, he’s in jail,” Samuel said. “Down, I don’t know, somewhere around Poughkeepsie. It was in the papers.” He frowned at them. “Didn’t you know? I figured … that’s where you got my name, right? He’s telling the cops about the rest of us to get his charges reduced. Right?”

  3.

  The weather wasn’t letting up. No matter how many times he checked it, Russ’s hand-cranked radio kept giving them the same forecast: wintry mix and freezing rain from Albany to Montreal. As the morning progressed, Clare watched her husband go from boneless satisfaction to busily packing and prepping the cabin for his absence to stalking back and forth across the space, glaring at the unchanging vista of wet snow and dripping ice. “I just want to know what’s going on,” he said for the tenth time.

  She was tempted to ask him if this was changing his mind about their little no-one-can-reach-us hideaway, but she knew he was on edge about the missing child and the problems the department would be having with the worsening roads.

  The next time he paced past her to stare accusingly at the lake—now invisible through a scrim of snow and icy rain—Clare set her book in her lap and said, “What about the radio in your truck?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The police band radio. Why don’t you use that to contact Lyle?”

  “I’d never reach our signal from here.”

  “Of course not. But there must be some emergency bandwidth out here, right? They do have nine-one-one?”

  Russ stopped in his tracks. “Yeah. Yeah, they do.”

  “Can’t they relay your signal?”

  He grinned at her. “Yes. They can.” He ruffled her hair. “Smart girl. I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”

  “Mmm.” She went back to reading as he wrestled on his outdoor gear.

  “Be right back,” he said. “C’mon, Oscar. You might as well get out, too.” As the door shut behind them, Clare put her book down. She really did want some alone time this week. She never realized how much sheer energy her pastoral work took out of her until she was away from it. These past three months had been like working under a Laundromat’s steam presser. Nothing but scorching heat and pressure and every last wrinkle ironed out of her. She smiled a little. Except for the being-married-to-Russ part. Despite the huge issue that lay—literally—between them, marriage
was turning out to be good for her. A bulwark against her PTSD-induced cravings for alcohol and amphetamines. A guarding line between her personal life and her ministry. The place where she wasn’t the Reverend Fergusson or Major Fergusson or even—as strange and spiky as it sounded—Mrs. Van Alstyne. Just herself.

  Oh, hell, she couldn’t stay here alone. She sat up and tossed her book on the rickety end table. She didn’t need solitude to figure out what to do about the bishop’s ultimatum. She needed Russ.

  The kitchen door slammed open. Oscar bounded in, shedding snow and ice. “Good Lord,” Clare said.

  Russ was on the dog’s heels. “Get a towel before he—”

  Oscar shook himself hard enough to make his short red-gold coat stand to attention. Clare flung up her arms to protect herself from the shower.

  “—shakes off,” Russ concluded.

  “Thanks for the tip.” Clare grabbed one of the towels hanging on the wall next to the bathroom. She rubbed Oscar down as he wiggled and twisted and tried to lick her face. “Did it work?”

  “Sure did. The state police barracks relayed my call to Harlene, who patched me through to Lyle. It wasn’t the best connection, but we could communicate.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Kevin Flynn and Hadley Knox turned up an interesting lead yesterday evening. Seems the missing girl’s father—an ex-con named Hector DeJean—was up here at Cooper’s Corners overnight Thursday. Allegedly fixing up a sprung pipe at a church camp. Lyle asked me to check it out.”

  “Good thing you didn’t leave first thing this morning, then.”

  He slanted her a smile. “Good thing.”

  “Listen.” She caught his arm. “You were right. About me staying. I should go back with you.”

  “Thank God. Okay, we can—” He glanced around the cabin. “No, wait. I don’t want to take the time to pack the rest of our stuff up right now. I need to get up to Cooper’s Corners.”

  “Fine. We go and come back after you’ve cleared the place.”