A Fountain Filled With Blood

  Clare felt the phone go slippery in her grasp and realized she had been squeezing it too tightly. “So this means you don’t think I should ride down Main Street buck naked, calling for all lesbian, gay, and transgendered people to join us in an interfaith service at St. Alban’s?”

  There was a heavy pause. “That’s a joke, right?”

  “Robert, are you deliberately trying to be offensive, or is it just accidental? My ‘little pet projects’? Do you really believe it has nothing to do with us? Since when does hatred and prejudice breaking out in our own community not concern us?”

  Over the line, she could hear him groan. “I knew it. I told Terry Wright. I said you were probably chomping at the bit to save the gays.”

  “You were talking about me with Terry Wright?” Terence Wright, senior vice president in the corporate loan department of AllBanc, was another vestry member. “Who else?”

  “A few phone calls were made between members of the vestry. The situation was discussed. Some concerns were expressed.”

  The passive voice was used. Clare rolled her eyes. “I’m curious. Was Sterling Sumner included in these discussions?”

  “I didn’t happen to speak with him.”

  “Ha.”

  “What do you mean, ‘ha’?”

  “I mean, ha, he’s the only gay member of the vestry.”

  “Sterling is not gay! He’s just artistic!”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Robert. Do you think he wears that scarf year-round because he’s cold?”

  The developer, who was a good twenty-five years her senior and probably did think the flamboyant Sumner had an ‘artistic’ temperament, sputtered over the phone.

  “Look,” she went on, “I had been concerned about the issues raised by the assaults on Dr. Dvorak and Todd MacPherson. But to tell the truth, I’ve been so swept away by events that I hadn’t been thinking about anything in any coherent fashion. Now I will.”

  Corlew started to speak, but she steamed forward. “We’ll have a meeting. We haven’t gotten the whole vestry together since May. We’ll talk about what it means to live in a community where homophobia rises to the point of violent hate crimes and what we, as Christians, ought to do about it.”

  “There’s no way you’re going to get everybody together at the church in July. Lacey Marshall and Sterling are both ensconced in their camps at Lake George, and I can guarantee you they won’t leave before September. Norm Madsen is off on one of those Elderhostel trips, picking up old pottery shards in Greece.”

  “You and Terry are in town, aren’t you?”

  “We hardly comprise the whole vestry. And Terry’s actually on vacation from the bank this week. I was going to take him sailing—”

  “Okay, let’s do that. Where is it you sail?”

  “What? Where? Lake George, of course. But—”

  “Great. Let’s all meet at the lake and have our discussion there. We can do it before you and Terry go out, at either Mrs. Marshall’s or Sumner’s summer house, or—how big is your boat?”

  “Forty-two feet. Are you proposing a floating vestry meeting?”

  “Sure! That way, no one has to be dragged away from their summer fun.”

  There was a dead silence for a moment. Then he said, “That’s a joke, right?”

  “No, the transgendered liberation parade was a joke. This is a proposal. The alternative is that we drag everybody in here for a nice long un-air-conditioned meeting. I don’t want to discuss this over the phone, one person at a time. We’ll never get anywhere. And the issue needs addressing now, not in September. When were you going to meet Terry?”

  “Friday,” he said.

  “Great! Friday would work well for me. I’ve got home visits in the morning and then the noontime Eucharist, but I’m free the rest of the afternoon. Look, I’m going to pass you back to Lois. You let her know where and when to meet at your boat, and she’ll notify everyone else. I’m glad you called and brought this up, Robert. This will really help clarify where we, as a church, stand.”

  “Reverend Clare…” She could hear grinding noises from the other end.

  “Yes, Robert?”

  There were some more noises. Finally, he managed to say, “I’ll see you on Friday.”

  “See you then. Bye.” She pressed the transfer button before he could reply. She was getting a handle on the different personalities on her vestry. Robert Corlew was a well-intentioned bully, a man who knew he was right in most everything he held an opinion on and who didn’t hesitate to wield his big voice and brusque manner like a blunt instrument. She thought of Msgt. Ashley “Hardball” Wright, her survival school instructor at Egeland Air Force Base. He had been big on turning other people’s weapons against them. You spot someone hunting for you with a gun, you remember: That’s not his gun. That’s your gun.

  She punched the main office button. “Lois? Mr. Corlew is holding. We’re having an impromptu vestry meeting on his boat Friday. You get the time and place to meet and notify everyone who isn’t out of the country. He may want to wiggle out of it. Don’t let him put you off.”

  “As if,” the secretary said. Clare hung up and looked at the window in front of her desk with an expression of smug satisfaction. Now. If she could deal with one old fossil stuck in his tracks, she could surely deal with another.

  That afternoon was her weekly hospital visit, but she would have gone anyway, to look in on Todd MacPherson. She sat and visited a while with Mr. Ellis, who was in for his second hip replacement, and with Mrs. Johnson, who was getting a biopsy after she had started bleeding from her uterus. The seventy-year-old already had diabetes, a pacemaker, and high blood pressure, and her surgeon, a sympathetic woman Clare’s age, was cheerfully upbeat in front of her patient and considerably more cautious when speaking to Clare. The unvarnished truth about Mrs. Johnson’s chances put Clare in a somber mood as she entered Todd MacPherson’s private room.

  She had expected to see family—and there was, his sister Trish—and perhaps someone from the police department—there wasn’t—but she was surprised to see two men whose expensive clothing firmly stamped them as not from Millers Kill, as well as a photographer carrying fifty pounds of cameras and light meters around his neck.

  Trish, sitting in a corner chair, noticed her first and waved her in.

  “I don’t want to interrupt,” Clare said, hesitating.

  “No, it’s all right,” Trish said. “Todd, you remember Reverend Clare. She’s going to marry Kurtis and me. She came and stayed with us while you were in surgery Saturday.”

  Todd, lying propped up on a stack of pillows, was a patchwork of bruises, but already he radiated more energy than Clare would have expected. One of the benefits of being twenty-four, she guessed. “Hi, Reverend Clare,” he said.

  “I just wanted to pop in and see how you were doing,” she said, taking his proffered hand. “You gave your family quite a scare there.”

  “It gave me quite a scare, too.”

  One of the well-dressed men, a fair-skinned blond who had been staring at Clare, snapped his fingers. “Clare Fergusson,” he said.

  She looked at him, surprised. “Yes.”

  “You’re the one who found Bill Ingraham’s body,” he said.

  “Oh, that was just—”

  “Nils Bensen,” he said, extending his hand and grasping hers. “This is my colleague Adam Coppela.” Coppela was also blond, although from the coloring of his skin and eyebrows, this was more a monumental act of will than anything to do with his genetic heritage.

  “They’re from the Adirondack Pride team,” Todd said, beaming as much as his battered face would allow. “I’m going to be on the cover of their next magazine.”

  “That’s right,” Bensen said. “Todd here illustrates the terrible trap of simply conforming to the strictures of the straight establishment.”

  Coppela clapped a thick-fingered hand on Todd’s shoulder. “The kid tries to fly under the radar, giving no offense—”

>   “A promising young businessman, paying his taxes—”

  “And what happens? Wham!” Coppela smacked his fist into his palm. Clare and Trish both started. “He gets the crap pounded out of him because he’s queer. You can hide, but you can’t run.”

  “I’m going to speak at the next regional meeting,” Todd said.

  “You’re going to be our star,” Bensen said, smiling down at Todd like a coach looking at his first-round draft choice. He glanced up at Clare. “Since the story broke, we’ve already gotten triple our usual volume of calls asking about donating.”

  “Ah,” she said. “That’s wonderful.”

  “Maybe we can do an interview with you as a sidebar to Todd’s article,” Bensen said. He framed a headline in the air. “The church’s official representative speaks out against homophobia.”

  Clare raised her hands. “I’m not the church’s official representative. I’m not even sure I’m St. Alban’s official representative. If you want a statement, I suggest you contact the diocesan office in Albany.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not as sexy as a young hip priest with—” Bensen broke off, his eyes thoughtful. “You aren’t a lesbian, by any chance?”

  “No!” she said, and immediately regretted denying it so fervently. “What I mean is, my sex life is private.” Bensen looked very interested. She felt her cheeks getting pink. “That is, if I had a sex life. Which I don’t. I’m practicing celibacy.”

  “You any good at it?” Coppela asked.

  “I hate to interrupt this fascinating conversation, but I need to ask Mr. MacPherson to spend a little time with Ms. Nguyen from the district attorney’s office.” Clare spun around and discovered she had been right to expect the police to be here. Chief Van Alstyne was standing in the doorway, eyebrows raised. He looked at Todd. “She’s going to show you some photos for possible IDs.” He speared the Adirondack Pride pair with a look and gestured toward the door. Clare waited until they had cleared the room before she left, passing a petite woman lugging photo albums on the way.

  She waited outside the door, hoping to catch him when they were done. She was surprised when he emerged alone only a few minutes later. “Did he make an identification that quickly?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No, I just made the introductions. We don’t handle the actual viewing. Someone from the DA’s office who doesn’t know who we’ve tapped shows the pictures. That way, the guy’s lawyer can’t get the ID thrown out because maybe a cop breathed a little too hard when the victim pointed to the right one.”

  “Do you have the Elliott guy from the construction job?”

  He looked up and down the hall, as if someone might be listening in. Except for an elderly man shuffling along with his IV bag on a pole, they were alone. “Yeah.” He shifted his shoulder and winced. “He’s in custody. He gave up the two guys he says did the jobs with him. One’s a loser named Colvin; we’re trying to track him down through his girlfriend. The other’s more interesting.” He cupped her elbow in his hand and led her farther away from MacPherson’s door. “According to McKinley, the ring-leader was a guy named Chris Dessaint. He’s a guy with a job and a short list, the kind of arrests that happen when you’re young and stupid and get drunk Saturday nights. He and McKinley were up to Lake George a couple of weeks ago and they beat up some gay tourist.”

  Clare winced. Suddenly, she felt a lot more sympathy for the Adirondack Pride team.

  “Then Chris comes back to McKinley and—get this—says there’s money in beating up gays.”

  “What? But Dr. Dvorak wasn’t robbed.”

  “Not that kind of money. Payroll. Someone was passing along money and drugs in exchange for assaults on homosexuals.”

  “You’re kidding. That’s weird.” She looked up at him. “You think there’s some sort of supremacy group going on? A militia?”

  “I’ve never heard of them paying a bunch of losers to front them. They usually manage to recruit their own losers.”

  The door to MacPherson’s room swung open. Ms. Nguyen stepped into the hall. “He’s done,” she said, passing them on her way to the elevator. “You can question him now.”

  “Be right there,” Russ said. He looked at Clare. “This stays between you and me, right? Even if you get outraged by the injustice of life, et cetera.”

  She crossed her heart. “Even if.” He glanced toward the door and she suddenly wanted, more than anything, to keep him there for a few minutes longer. Just because talking with him was easier than talking with anyone else. “Have you seen your mother? I took the dogs back. She seemed pretty cheerful about the arrest and all.”

  “Not yet. I’m going over there Friday to do some work on the porch. Or at least that’s the excuse. Mostly, I’m going over for dinner and the game. Linda’s redecorating the living room this weekend, and I need to be out of the way Friday. I can’t stand tripping over ladders and breathing paint fumes.”

  “Your living room? Was that the room with the comfy chairs?” Clare had been to his house last winter—once. “But it was so pretty. I liked it.”

  “Me, too.”

  Trish MacPherson stuck her head out the door. “Chief? Are you—”

  “I’m coming,” he said. He paused before entering the room, his hand on the edge of the door. He looked at Clare. “Hey.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Are you any good at that celibacy thing?”

  Chapter Twenty

  The first thing that struck Lawrence Robinson was the quarreling of crows. A quarrel of crows—wasn’t that what they were called? “Hey, Donna,” he called back to his wife, who was methodically tramping up the steep trail behind him. “What’s the collective noun for crows?”

  She stopped beside him, breathing hard, and pushed her auburn hair out of her eyes. He handed her his water bottle. Two week’s hiking in the Adirondacks had been his idea for their summer break from Cornell, and he was grateful she was being such a good sport about it. Alternating camp nights with bed-and-breakfast stays had been her idea. It meant they never got very far into the wilderness, but the promise of a good mattress and a shower every other night kept Donna gamely walking forward.

  She swallowed the tepid water and rubbed her hands dry on her T-shirt. She squinted into the trees. The raucous cries of the birds increased in volume, and then a wide-winged black shape rocketed through the forest cover, breaking the air over their heads and diving down, swooping through the cleared space of the trail. It skimmed overhead, so close that Lawrence could have jumped up and caught a tail feather, and then disappeared over the next rise, like a supernatural messenger from an Edgar Allan Poe tale.

  His wife, who taught biology to premed students and was not the sort for fanciful imagery, said, “The collective noun for ravens, you mean? That was a raven. Crows are much smaller.” She eased her pack off her shoulders with a grunt. “They’re making God’s own racket down there, aren’t they?”

  Lawrence jerked his attention away from the raven’s flight path. After twenty-eight years of marriage, he could take a hint. They had left the bed-and-breakfast in Millers Kill over four hours ago, and Donna was ready for a break. He unbuckled and dropped his backpack. The ravens couldn’t be seen, but they certainly could be heard, guttural cries and sharp knocking calls that sounded as if they were demanding, “Talk! Talk!”

  Donna fished a granola bar out of her waist pack. “Probably fighting over a carcass.”

  “Yeah? Cool! You think there might be bones? Some bones would be a great prop for my class next semester on ritual and imagery in premodern societies.”

  Donna stuffed the rest of the bar into her mouth. “I fawt you were gon’ have ’em paint rocks,” she said around a mouthful of oats. She rolled her eyes at him and swallowed. “Okay, let’s go have a look. It’s probably just a raccoon. I can’t imagine too many premodern societies worshiped raccoons.” She struck out toward the sounds. He followed after, occasionally slowing himself on a tree trunk as the angle of the mou
ntainside increased. She was a good sport, his wife.

  This part of their hike was through mature forest, tall trees and little underbrush, thick dark humus composted from decades of fallen leaves quieting their steps. The day was hot and heavy, even here underneath the shade of the forest cover, and no breezes stirred the crowns of the beeches and maples. The ravens’ screams sounded unnaturally loud in the stillness.

  “Whoa! Honey!” Below him, Donna scrambled back, her legs kicking against the downward slant of the forest floor.

  “What? Are you okay?” He let go of the trunk he had been clasping and jogged down the slope sideways until he could reach her.

  “It’s a drop-off. Not terribly high, but it startled me.” She pointed to where the rich earth of the forest floor crumbled into air. Lawrence leaned against the pebbled trunk of an old black-cherry tree whose roots thrust through soil and rock into the air. “Be careful, honey,” Donna said.

  He could see the striated rock beneath him, a gash in the mountainside maybe ten or twelve feet high. Below them was a brook, brown and speckled as a trout, running between two narrow banks of shaggy grass, the closer side growing right up to the rock, the farther side petering out into the deeply shaded hardwood forest.

  At the water’s edge, a small tent was staked out next to a stand of paper birch gleaming in the midday sun like fragile polished bones. The flapping, quarreling ravens nearly obscured its dun-colored fabric, perching on the aluminum ridgepole, strutting on the ground, plucking at the window flaps. “You’re not going to believe this.” Lawrence glanced back at Donna. “It looks like The Birds down there. I think someone’s in trouble.”