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

  He always stopped by the call center and said hi to Harlene first. Their dispatcher, who was even older than the chief and the dep, liked to give him a sort of eyeball health check. In the summer, she made sure he had on sunscreen. “You know,” she’d say, “fair-skinned redheads burn easier than anybody else.” Since his mother had been telling him so for longer than he could remember, Kevin did, in fact, know this. In the winter, she fed him home-baked goodies. “You need to put on some weight,” she’d say. “Skinny people die out in the cold, you know that?” Harlene herself was in no danger of death-by-thinness.

  Then he logged in, checked the circ sheets, and booted up his computer. He kept his face to the screen until it was time for the morning briefing, not talking, only answering with a quick “Morning,” as the rest of the shift arrived in the single large squad room that served as everyone’s office.

  Getting as much paperwork as he could done in the A.M. meant he got out faster in the afternoon. It also meant he didn’t see Officer Hadley Knox until roll call. A great deal of his time at the station was choreographed so as to avoid Hadley Knox.

  Today, despite burying himself in a CADEA report, Kevin knew when she arrived. He could smell her. He didn’t know if it was perfume, or the shampoo she used on her boy-short hair, or if it was just Hadley, but he could always smell her. He stared at the heading CAPITOL AREA DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENCY as if it was the most interesting thing he was going to see all day until she had passed by.

  Lyle MacAuley, the deputy chief, stuck his head into the bullpen. “Briefing.” Kevin folded up his laptop, grabbed his notebook and followed the rest of the officers out the door. He always got in last to the briefing, so he could position himself as far away from Hadley as possible. In Syracuse, they had sat by tens in ordered rows while their names were called off, but at the MKPD they had a jumble of wooden chairs and no more than five officers at any one time, so he had to keep flexible. He didn’t sit behind her, where he’d be tempted to look at her. To the side was best, where he only caught glimpses of her out of the corner of his eye.

  When he got to the briefing room, Kevin was startled to see the chief in his usual place, sitting on the large wooden table, his boots planted on two chairs. At his TDY, Kevin had been bemused to see the sergeant in charge standing, behind a podium, with a laser pointer. In Syracuse, they had PowerPoint. In Millers Kill, they had Lyle MacAuley, with the erasable marker, by the whiteboard.

  “What’re you are doin’ here, Chief?” Noble Entwhistle stopped in the middle of the floor while he processed the unexpected sight. “I thought you was going on vacation for the week.”

  The chief gestured for them to take their seats. “I’m still heading out this afternoon. I had a call last night I wanted to get you up to date on.”

  “The fire on Crandell Hill Road?” Kevin had read last night’s logs, and the only other activities had been a dead deer on Old Route 100 and a couple of low-level traffic stops for missing lights.

  “That’s right. Home of Theodore and Helen MacAllen, who did not survive the fire. You all know the drill when there’s a fatality. The state fire marshal’s office’ll send one of their investigators over this morning, and Kevin, I want you to be there.”

  “You don’t trust ’em to share everything they find out?” Lyle MacAuley raised his bushy gray eyebrows. “I’m shocked. Shocked, I say.”

  “When it comes to state agencies, my motto is ‘Trust but verify.’ Kevin, be polite, but make sure we’ve got a copy of everything and that your signature’s on the evidence tags along with the arson investigator’s.”

  Kevin nodded.

  “I don’t recall their names ever coming across my desk.” The chief glanced around the room. “Anybody? Noble?”

  The big man shook his head. “I think they moved here three or four years ago. Retired, maybe? Never been in any trouble that I know.”

  If Noble hadn’t heard of them, they were clean. He had a prodigious memory for the families and features of their corner of the Adirondacks.

  “Okay. Knox, I want you to run down the MacAllens from our end. Was there anything going on that might point toward arson? Pay special attention to their finances—they wouldn’t be the first people to wind up killing themselves while trying to collect on their insurance.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay. I’ll be here until noon. After that, report in to Lyle if you run across anything.” The chief’s boots thudded on the floor as he slid off the table. “Kevin? Can I see you a minute?”

  Kevin followed the chief back to his office. “Have a seat,” the chief said. Since there was only one chair that wasn’t piled with manila folders, report forms, and back issues of Police Digest, Kevin took it.

  The chief sat across the paper-strewn desk from him. “I got a call first thing this morning from Captain Iacocca in Syracuse. He wanted to let me know he was extending an offer of employment to one of my officers.” He folded his arms over his chest. “I wish the staties would be so courteous. They just poach my guys with no warning.”

  Kevin blinked. “Employment?”

  The chief nodded. “They’d like to hire you.”

  “Me?”

  “Don’t look so surprised. I got a glowing report of your performance after your six-month TDY.”

  “But I haven’t gotten anything—” He suddenly realized how this must look. “I didn’t apply to them, Chief. Honest, I didn’t.”

  “I know. The invitation to join their department’s in the mail. It’ll probably be waiting for you when you get home.” The chief braced his arms on his desk. “You’re a good cop, Kevin. I’d hate like hell to lose you, but I realize Syracuse can offer you opportunities we’ll never be able to match. They’ve got a detective squad, a fraud unit, tactical response…” The chief plucked a hair from his sleeve. “Hell, even K-9, if you want to work with dogs.”

  Kevin gripped his chair. He felt like he might lose his balance. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Think about it. If you have any questions, if you want to bounce anything off me, just drop in and—” The chief frowned. “No, I’ll be away. You can call me on my cell. Captain Iacocca would like to hear from you by next Monday. He’s trying to fill his positions before going up for budget review.” The chief stood and held out his hand. Kevin got up, knock-kneed, and shook it. “You’ll be a great asset to whatever department you choose. And wherever you go, you’ll always be part of the Millers Kill family.”

  Twenty seconds later, Kevin was making his way along the same hallway he’d walked down every working day for the last five years. Possibilities spun in his head like pictures on a slot machine. SWAT team. Major Crimes. Detective.

  Then he thought about what he’d be giving up. Sunday dinner with the family. Going to basketball games in the same gym he played in as a high schooler. Home.

  The door to the ladies’ room swung open—it had been the visitors’ john before the department had hired a woman—and Hadley charged out. Kevin skidded to a stop, barely avoiding crashing into her. She looked up at him. Way up. She was tiny compared to his six-foot-plus. For a split second her dark eyes met his. “Sorry.” She dropped her gaze and bolted toward the squad room.

  Kevin rubbed his chest as he went to collect his parka. He was putting their nonrelationship behind him. He wasn’t still dreaming and hoping and wanting all the time. He—oh, hell, who was he kidding. He wasn’t moving on, he was just managing to keep from embarrassing the both of them. If he was going to be completely, brutally honest, he had to admit all those other reasons for not leaving were overshadowed by the fact that if he accepted the offer in Syracuse, he wouldn’t be seeing Hadley again.

  So the question he had to answer was, would he give up his dream job for the chance to keep bumping into Hadley Knox in the hallway? And if so, how pathetic a loser was he?

  6.

  Clare normally kept working—her secretary, Lois, referred to it as “hiding in her office”—until she was
summoned to the monthly vestry meeting. But this wasn’t the usual meeting, and it wasn’t the usual church business, and so she startled Lois when the secretary, carrying a tray with two pots and a jumble of mugs, entered the meeting room and found Clare standing by the black oak sideboard. “Am I late?” Lois asked, setting the tray down. “Or are you early?”

  “I’m early.” Clare rubbed her stomach. She didn’t want to call attention to her pregnancy, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. She had no idea where the impulse came from. She’d never had the slightest urge to touch another expectant mother’s abdomen.

  “Bearding the lions in the den?” Lois unstacked the mugs and set out the sugar and milk.

  “I feel like the politicians you see hanging outside the town hall on voting day. One last chance to shake hands and smile before my fate’s decided.” She looked around her at the reproduction linenfold paneling, the diamond-paned windows, the worn Aubusson rug. “Either that or Anne Boleyn. I can’t decide.”

  “Cheer up! They’re not going to cut your head off with a sword.” Lois handed her a mug. “Have some tea. It’s herbal.”

  Clare made a gagging noise but poured herself a cup anyway. “God, I wish I hadn’t agreed to this honeymoon thing. I should be here.”

  “Doing what? You met with the bishop. The vestry’s met with the bishop. You can be sure Elizabeth de Groot’s been meeting with the bishop.”

  “She probably has him on speed dial.” Clare’s deacon pulled her own weight, no one could fault her on that. Still, her primary job responsibility was to keep a close watch and an even closer rein on Clare.

  “The die is cast. What’s done is done. You might as well be off relaxing and enjoying that hunky police chief of yours.”

  Clare gestured toward her maternity clerical blouse. “That’s the point, isn’t it? I’ve obviously already been enjoying that hunky police chief.”

  Lois made a token attempt at schooling her expression, then guffawed. She was a petite woman, but she laughed like Santa Claus on nitrous oxide. Clare began laughing helplessly, too, which was when the first of the vestry entered the room. “Goodness.” Mr. Madsen blinked, making him appear more worried than usual. “Are we interrupting?”

  “I suspect they’re just blowing off steam, Norm.” Mrs. Henry Marshall released the arm of her gentleman friend and gave Clare a hug. “How are you doing, dear?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  The elderly woman nodded. “At least your trouble’s professional this time, instead of personal. Remember, jobs can be replaced. Husbands cannot.”

  Mr. Madsen paused while easing off Mrs. Marshall’s fur-collared coat. He frowned, as if trying to tease out where he fit in that statement.

  “Hi, everyone.” Geoffrey Burns, the youngest member of the vestry, strode through the door, shucking off his camel coat. He tossed his briefcase on the black oak table with the disregard that comes from having much finer antiques at home. “Clare, I want you to know Karen and I support you one hundred percent.”

  “Thanks, Geoff. That—”

  “Although I still think you’re crazy for taking up with Van Alstyne. Hi, Terry.” The lawyer nodded to the portly banker entering the room. “I’ve got plenty of divorced friends I could have introduced you to if I had known you were actually getting serious about the guy.”

  “There was that nice fellow from Barkley Investments,” Terry McKellan agreed, shucking off his puffy parka. “I liked him.”

  “He knew wines,” Geoff said.

  “Yes, Hugh Parteger was a lovely man. However,” Clare could hear her voice stretching, “I’m married and expecting, so I think you can say I’ve well and truly made my bed.”

  “And now you have to lie in it?” Sterling Sumner didn’t enter the meeting room, he made an entrance, with the rest of them serving as his audience.

  “Sterling…” Mrs. Marshall’s usually composed voice sharpened.

  “I’m just saying this sort of thing didn’t happen back when we only had male clergy. Which is what I told the bishop.”

  Oh, wonderful. Clare wasn’t just embarrassing her own congregation, she was putting a black mark on every woman in the diocese.

  “It seems to me,” Mrs. Marshall said, “male clergy have had their share of scandals.”

  “Scandal? For God’s sake. We’re not living in the nineteenth century.” Geoff Burns thumped his coffee mug on the sideboard. “Hell, nowadays, the fact a couple actually gets married before bringing a child into the world is enough to earn them a gold star from Miss Manners.”

  “Barely exceeding the low expectations of the present day is hardly what we’re here for, though, is it?” Sterling took his seat, tugging his cashmere scarf for emphasis.

  “Back in our day, there were plenty of girls who walked up the aisle in a tight-waisted dress, Sterling.” Mrs. Marshall accepted a cup of tea from Norm Madsen and carried it to the table. “As long as the niceties were observed, no one commented if they had six-and-a-half-pound premature babies.” She paused. “Well. No one nice would comment.”

  Clare felt a weight pressing on her chest. At that moment, she was sure if she tore open her blouse, the letters PMS would be emblazoned over her breastbone. Pre-Marital Sex.

  “Excuse me. Sorry.” Clare looked up to see Lois sidling through the door past two figures in black clericals. The Reverend Elizabeth de Groot entered, closely followed by the Archdeacon, Willard Aberforth. They made an odd pair; the one petite and composed, the other stiltlike and stooping. One worked closely with Clare as part of the St. Alban’s family. The other was opposed to women’s ordination in general and many of Clare’s actions in particular. One would throw her under a bus with a regretful moue. The other would step in front of the bus in her place, lecturing her until the moment he was mown down.

  Aberforth had already divested himself of coat and boots, which meant he had stopped at Elizabeth’s office before proceeding to the meeting room. Clare tried to gauge his news by the look on de Groot’s fine-boned face. The problem was, her deacon only had three basic expressions, as far as Clare could tell. Saintly patience, regret, and I’m disappointed in you. No, there was a fourth. Smiling bravely. She was using it right now, crossing the room, looking as if she’d just heard that the rector of St. Alban’s had a fatal disease. “Clare. Oh, Clare. Are you nervous?”

  “Archdeacon Aberforth’s just here to tell the vestry the next step in the bishop’s review.” Clare kept her voice calm. “I don’t think he’s going to hand me a bell and send me out to cry, ‘Unclean.’”

  “I wish I had your sense of humor. It just makes me sick to think—” Elizabeth touched the silver cross on her chest. “Well, I suppose that’s the benefit of being so impulsive. You never really have to think about the consequences of your acts until it’s all too late.”

  Clare smiled tightly. “Shall we sit down?”

  She took her usual place at the head of the table. Until and unless the bishop removed her, she was still the rector here. She wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t see the grim humor in her possessiveness. She’d been wrestling with doubt ever since she became a parish priest. She’d jumped at the chance to recommission in the Guard as if the army were a rescue basket waiting to lift her away from her pastoral failures and a relationship she’d believed was irretrievably broken. She dropped her hand on her abdomen again. The voice of her survival school instructor echoed in her head. You’re not very bright, are you, Fergusson?

  “… are you, Ms. Fergusson?”

  “Hm?” She snapped to attention.

  “I asked,” Father Aberforth said, “if you were waiting for anyone else.”

  “Mr. Corlew isn’t here yet,” Elizabeth said. “He’s our senior warden.”

  “We can bring him up to speed when he arrives.” In the tally she kept in her head, Clare suspected he was a no vote. Not that they would be voting today. “I believe you all know the Reverend Canon Aberforth. Archdeacon? This is your meeting.”
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  The archdeacon nodded perfunctorily to the rest of the table. The droops and folds of his face made him look like a basset hound—if bassets had shrewd eyes and caustic tongues.

  “The bishop first wishes me to thank all of you for the time you’ve taken to respond to his questions. He knows this is a matter of some delicacy, and he appreciates the vestry’s willingness to be perfectly frank with him.”

  Clare’s gaze slid toward Sterling Sumner. She could just imagine how perfectly frank he must have been.

  “As we know, the church’s position toward her clergy is that they be either married or celibate.”

  “Or in a faithful, monogamous relationship if they’re not allowed to marry by the laws of their state.” Clare knew Aberforth had heard her argument before, but she couldn’t help repeating it again.

  Aberforth blinked at her. “Yes, Ms. Fergusson. I believe we all know your position in that regard. However, there was no legal or moral impediment to your marriage.”

  “You just jumped the gun,” Sterling said.

  “This is ridiculous,” Geoff Burns said. “Clare and Van Alstyne tied the knot less than five months after she’d gotten back from deployment! When my wife and I got engaged, it took her mother a year and a half to organize the damn ceremony. Frankly, I think starting their family as quickly as possible is smart. It’s not like Clare’s getting any younger.”

  Clare covered her face with one hand.

  Aberforth looked at both men quellingly. “The circumstances surrounding Ms. Fergusson’s pregnancy are well known to the bishop.”

  And boy, hadn’t that been a fun conversation.

  “Nevertheless, the disciplinary canons are clear. Under Section Four, Title Four, Ms. Fergusson could be brought up on charges of sexual misconduct and conduct unbecoming to a priest.” He raised his hand against the room’s instant uproar. “The bishop has no wish to convene a disciplinary panel. He feels the resulting publicity would reflect poorly on St. Alban’s, the diocese, and the church as a whole.” From across the table, Aberforth pinned her with his black eyes. “Therefore, he is offering you the chance to quietly resign. If you do so, no actions will be taken, and you will be free to seek a parish in another diocese without the taint of charges following you.”