“I thought you would.”
“So what are you doing here? You just come out to introduce me to this nice young lady? Or you after something?”
“I’m after something. Did you ever meet Emil Dvorak, our medical examiner?” Margy shook her head. “He’s kind of a friend of mine. Last night, someone beat him up pretty bad. He was airlifted down to Albany.”
“Good Lord.” Margy pressed her fingers flat against her lips. “You catch who did it?”
“Not yet. I will.” Russ replied. Margy nodded. “Anyway, his, um, roommate went down with him, and they left behind two dogs. Clare’s helping them out by trying to find a place to board the beasts.” He crossed to the door and opened it. Bob and Gal, lying in the shade of one of the pines, looked up. Their tails began thumping as Clare and Margy walked out.
“I hate to impose,” Clare said. “When I told Paul I’d see to the dogs, I thought I’d simply have them boarded for a few days. But the kennel I spoke with said there’s no room because of the holiday weekend.” She couldn’t keep a pleading look off her face. “I’d keep them at the rectory with me, but I have an unfenced yard on a fairly busy street. They’d have to be indoors unless I was there. And I keep weird hours.”
“Well, don’t they look sweet.” Margy clapped her hands and the Berns rose, shook off pine needles and grass clippings, and trotted over. “Of course I’ll have ’em here. What are their names?”
“Gal and Bob. They’re Bernese mountain dogs.”
The dogs snuffled at Margy’s hands. “Bob? Who names a dog Bob?”
“That’s what I thought. I’ve got their bowls and toys and a sack of food in my trunk.”
“Russ can fetch those. Russell?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He held out his hand to Clare. “Keys?”
“Oh, it’s unlocked.”
He shook his head. “Of course. Of course it is.”
“He thinks I should be more careful about locking up the rectory and my car,” Clare explained as Russ toted the fifty-pound sack of dog chow into the backyard.
“He’s prob’ly right. He usually is about these things.”
“I know. I guess I just feel that if someone is desperate enough to steal what I might have, he needs it more than I do anyway.”
The dogs frisked around Russ, trying to snatch the toys out of his arms. He flung them into the backyard, and Bob and Gal fell onto the rubber bones and squeaky ducks with abandon. He dusted off his hands and returned to the stone steps. “I’m on duty, Mom, so I’d better be heading back. I’ll see you at the parade on Sunday. Got roped into driving the squad car again this year.” He looked at Clare. “You want to follow me into town?”
His mother grabbed his ears again and kissed him. “Don’t be a stranger, sweetie. And keep yourself safe! There’re a lot of crazies out on a holiday weekend.”
“Don’t I know it. Bye, Mom. Thanks.”
“Thank you so much for looking after the dogs, Mrs.—Margy. Please give me a call if you need me to sit them or take them for a while. I’m in the phone book.” She extended her hand, only to be pulled off balance by Mrs. Van Alstyne’s hug. “I don’t shake hands,” Margy said. “I like to give folks a squeeze.” The old woman felt plump and sturdy and smelled of Elizabeth Arden’s Blue Grass powder. “I’ll have Russ bring you up here for dinner sometime soon. You can cook.”
Clare laughed. “Okay, we’ll do that.”
As Clare slid behind the Shelby’s steering wheel, Margy disappeared around the back. She could hear a cacophony of joyous barking. “Your mom’s really something. Not quite what I expected.”
Russ leaned against the door of his cruiser, facing her. “Mom’s like the Spanish Inquisition in that old Monty Python skit.”
“ ‘Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!’ ” they both quoted. He laughed.
“I really am grateful to her. Now I can tell Paul the dogs are well taken care of.”
“You gonna call him?”
“I’m not sure how to reach him. I gave him my number and asked him to call me. Of course, I haven’t heard anything yet.”
“Well, the hospital should update me on the situation at some point. I’ll let you know what’s happening.”
“Why would the hospital…” He watched her as the answer came to her. “Oh. If Emil dies, it’ll be a murder investigation.” He jerked his chin in assent. She compressed her lips for a moment, and they both fell silent. Finally, she asked, “Do you have any leads?”
“Not any worth jack-all. We lifted prints but didn’t get any matches. Paint flakes that are the most common red used by Chevrolet. Our best bet right now is finding a red Chevy vehicle that’s recently gotten some damage. I’ve got Noble checking out all the area body shops and auto-parts stores this morning.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. It’s not like Law & Order—we don’t always find the bad guy before the second commercial.”
“Russ…” She paused. “What if Ron Handler was right? What if it is a hate crime?”
“I sure as hell hope it isn’t.” He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know the real difference between an ordinary assault, if I can call it that, and a hate crime? The ordinary perpetrator is beating up on an individual. He’s mad, he acts on his feelings, and then he’s done with it. The perp attacking a victim because of the group he’s in…” He sighed. “He might not stop until he’s run out of people to hate.”
Chapter Six
“Okay, so you won’t forget that you’re going to pick up the candles and bring them over to Mom and Dad’s house.”
“I thought I was supposed to take them to the church.”
“No, Todd, you’re driving Aunt Sue and Uncle Bill to the church, and you’ve got to be there no later than eleven-thirty! You’ve got to have those candles at Mom and Dad’s in time for the florist to pick them up to take them to the church!”
“How come I can’t just take them to the florist’s and—” A rising screech cut him off. “Never mind. Never mind. I’ll have the candles to Mom by seven o’clock.”
“In the morning.”
“Of course in the morning! You know, there wasn’t nearly this much fuss when Tim got married. All I had to do was find a jacket and get there on time.”
“That’s because Tim’s a man. I’ve been dreaming about this day ever since I was a little girl! Everything is going to be perfect. It’s going to be a total fantasy come true.”
“Yeah, well, that’s what Princess Di thought.”
“Todd! That’s awful!” Her voice softened. “Someday you’ll meet someone—you know, someone special—and you’ll understand.”
“Yeah? Well…maybe. Look, I gotta run. It’s almost closing time, and the store’s a mess.”
“I love you, Oddball.”
“I love you, too, Fish Face. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“With the candles!”
“With the candles.”
Todd MacPherson understood the power of fantasy. He had viewed every single one of the movies for sale or rent in his video store, and, just like when he was a kid, they still had the power to sweep him away into another world, where people were better-looking, danger was an aphrodisiac, and problems could be solved in a two-hour running time.
His own problems were more intractable. As he methodically reshelved the returns and straightened racks jumbled by the usual Friday-evening rush of renters, he considered where he was going after closing up shop. Supposing, that is, he didn’t just crawl home and collapse in front of the tube. There was a little hole-in-the-wall bar in Hudson Falls, but he knew every guy who would be there on a Friday night, and he couldn’t stomach the thought of the same complaints and conversations he had heard a hundred times before. There was a bigger, more open place in Saratoga, where he might see some new faces, but that meant a forty-minute drive each way, an awfully late night when he had to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed the next morning for Trisha’s wedding. And to b
e perfectly honest with himself, he had never yet come up lucky there. The guys who paired off there were lean and tan and knew how to wear sweaters tied around their shoulders, if they looked rich, or military gear, if they looked sexy. Todd’s wardrobe consisted of jeans that bagged in the wrong way and T-shirts sporting old movie posters and film festival schedules.
He wiped a dusty copy of The Green Berets on his jeans and reshelved it in the John Wayne section. His best friend, Janine, had moved to New York City four years ago, after getting an associate’s degree at Adirondack Community College. Now she was working as a gofer in Rockefeller Center, hanging lights for Off-Off-Broadway productions, and taking the occasional film class at NYU. Every weekend, she called and ordered him to get the hell out of Millers Kill and come share an apartment with her. They had both been teens from another planet in high school, completely unable to fit in with the kids around them. They’d been alternately tormented and ignored because if it. But now Janine had a whole circle of friends and was dating some aspiring playwright, while he was still a geek—a celibate geek.
He picked up a copy of Truly Madly Deeply off the floor and examined Alan Rickman’s face. He thought he sort of resembled Alan Rickman, younger, of course, and with longer hair. Those snotty Saratoga summer boys just never got close enough to notice. He tossed the video in his hand. Maybe he wouldn’t go out anywhere. Maybe he’d stay a little late and put together an Alan Rickman display on his film-festival shelf.
The bell over the door tinkled, and he heard blended voices, yelping laughter. Sounded like Nintendo customers, here to pick up a weekend’s worth of bloody shoot-outs and pneumatically breasted women. That was the crux of his problem, the store. He had sunk so much time and money into it, and it was starting to do good business. Better than good. He had turned a profit the last two years. The loan officer at his bank loved him. How was he supposed to chuck it all on the chance that he might find something better in the city? What if he never found anything better? What if this was as good as it got?
“Hey, man, you got any Jujubes?”
Todd shelved Truly Madly Deeply under T and slid through the narrow aisle to the checkout counter. Two guys his own age lounged in front of the candy display, one of them leafing through this month’s Cinemagic magazine. They wore low-slung, wide-legged jeans cropped at the shins and backward-facing baseball caps, which made them look, in Todd’s opinion, like morons. “Didn’t see any there?” He glanced at the rack. “Hang on—I got some more in the back. If you guys are checking anything out, Friday’s our three-for-two special. Rent any two, get the third for free. Limit on one new release only.”
The Jujube guy grinned. “Hell yes, we’re checking something out.” He swaggered toward Todd, leading with his pelvis, looking him up and down. It was an overt, exaggeratedly sexual gesture, which made the hair on the back of Todd’s neck rise. He licked his upper lip and glanced at the other guy, who still leaned against the counter, flipping the magazine’s pages, opening and closing the cover so that Patrick Stewart appeared and disappeared between flashes of the other guy’s smirking face. Todd had been beaten up too many times in high school not to recognize what these guys wanted.
“We heard you got something special in the back room,” Jujube guy said. He was close enough that Todd could feel the heat and excitement radiating off his body. “Some special movies.”
Patrick Stewart appeared and disappeared, his face grave. Todd thought he might be saying that he should beam the hell out of this scene.
“Like those old gladiator flicks,” the guy with the magazine said. “Except for grown-ups.”
“So, whaddaya say?” Jujube guy reached both arms over his head and cracked his back. “Gonna show us some of that gay-bo porn? I always wondered how guys do guys.”
“I’d rather see chicks on chicks myself,” the other guy said.
“That ain’t gay, asshole. You can see that in any porn flick. You’re missin’ the point.”
Todd backed away slowly, keeping his trembling arms relaxed, forcing his face into an unalarmed expression. He thought he might throw up at any moment. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t carry any X-rated stock. There’s a convenience store outside Fort Henry that rents videos; they have a small selection.” If he could get to the back room, he could lock the door and call the cops. “Let me grab you those Jujubes and I can show you the address in the phone—” His words were choked off as an arm circled around his neck, clamping him tightly against an unseen chest. Oh, sweet God, there had been a third one in the store and he hadn’t even realized. He flailed against the man behind him, kicking backward, clawing at his head.
“Ow! Help me with this pussy, you assholes!”
Jujube guy punched Todd in the stomach, and he lunched forward, retching. The man behind him let go of his neck, clenching his hair in a fist and twisting one arm behind his back. Todd cried out. His wrist was forced higher, wrenching every joint in his arm. Todd bowed forward, straining on tiptoe to loosen the grip that was forcing his muscles and tendons to their limits, but the fist in his hair held him tightly against his invisible tormentor as he vibrated between pain and pain. “I got money in my cash register,” he said, his voice reedy and desperate. “Please, just take it. Take whatever you want and go. Please.” The last word cracked.
Todd felt a hard tug as his hair was yanked upward once, twice. “You really got me there with some of those kicks, pussy,” the unseen man behind him said. “Now I gotta hurt you bad.”
“Hey, man, let’s get the money. It’s no fancy electronic safe system or nothing. He’s probably got a wad of cash in there.”
“Shut up,” the man behind Todd said. “You know the deal. Nothin’ gets taken.”
“How’s he gonna know?”
“No. Now put the goddamn magazine down and help me with this fag.”
The last thing Todd thought, in the moment before all his thoughts were wiped away, was how businesslike they sounded. Like in Pulp Fiction. Nothing personal. Nothing personal. Nothing—
Chapter Seven
In her dream, Clare was floating in an inner tube on an emerald green pond. It was kind of like her special place in the woods near her parents’ home, except the water was bathtub-warm and there was much more open sky above her, the light dazzling through her closed eyelids. The tube spun slowly, her hair and feet trailing through the water, and then a man surfaced at her side and she saw with delight that it was Russ Van Alstyne. He floated close, smiling, and then his hands were running along her body, warm and liquid as the water. She noticed that she was naked. How wonderful. A car alarm went off on the distant shore, but she ignored it, watching his face and his hands, flowing from relaxation into a sweet tension. The car alarm was louder, annoying her. She worried that it might be her car. She fought to focus on the tingling sensations in her body, but the shrill was too…damn…loud. She woke with a sideways lurch across her bed, the phone ringing on her nightstand, sunshine splashing over her tangled sheets.
“Good Lord,” she said. She could feel her cheeks coloring. She took a deep breath and snagged the phone. “Hello?”
“Reverend Fergusson?” It sounded like a girl, trying not to cry.
“Yeah. I mean, yes, this is Clare Fergusson.”
“It’s me, Trisha MacPherson.” MacPherson. As in MacPherson and Engels, the celebration of Holy Matrimony, twelve o’clock this afternoon. “I’m afraid…I’m afraid we’re going to have to cancel the wedding.” The girl’s voice was choked with tears. Clare rubbed her eyes and tried to focus. Trisha’s fiancé must have dumped her. During their three sessions of premarital counseling, Clare had thought he looked shifty. A little too eager to please. The weasel.
“Trisha, I’m so sorry.” Clare sat up in bed, pulling herself away from the green, green pond and into the here and now. “I know it seems like the end of the world at this moment, but when someone breaks off an engagement, it’s a realistic reflection that they’re not ready to—”
br /> “Nobody broke off the engagement!” Outrage tightened Trisha MacPherson’s voice. “Kurt is here with me right now. It’s my brother Todd. He was beaten up last night. He was hurt very…”
Trisha’s voice was replaced by a young man’s. “Reverend Fergusson?”
Clare was wide-awake now, the floating world drowned in cold shock. “Kurtis? What’s up?”
“Trish’s brother Todd was assaulted in his video store last night. His brother Tim went looking for him this morning when we couldn’t raise him at home…found him unconscious and called an ambulance. We’re all at the Glens Falls Hospital right now.”
“How is he doing?”
“It’s pretty bad. They’re taking him in right now for a ruptured spleen. There may be kidney and liver damage, too.”
Clare tilted her clock toward her. Eight-thirty. “I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”
“Oh, thanks, Reverend. I know Trish’s family aren’t churchgoers, but I think they could use…we could all use some extra…” he foundered. “Thanks.”
There are no agnostics in foxholes, she thought after hanging up, and I’m meeting a lot of folks in foxholes lately. She had to call the sexton and the organist to let them know the wedding was off, have someone at the church to help guests who wouldn’t hear the news in time, tell the florist—oh, no, no wedding flowers meant someone on the floral committee would have to whip up a quick arrangement for Sunday…. Despite the whirl of practical details, she couldn’t keep from wondering: Was it a terrible coincidence that Millers Kill had seen two violent attacks in the space of two days? Or was there some connection between Trisha’s brother’s assault and what had happened to Emil Dvorak?
The surgery waiting room was full of anxious MacPhersons. The bride-to-be was curled up on a sofa in the corner, clutching her mother’s hands. The groom rubbed the back of his fiancée’s neck, while the father of the bride sat four-square and straight-backed, leafing through a two-year-old copy of Field & Stream. Half of the low artificial-leather chairs were occupied by people Clare had seen yesterday evening at the rehearsal. Some were watching a CNN anchor report on a possible pilots’ strike; others were paging restlessly through magazines. The best man stood with his back to the wall-mounted television, talking into a cell phone in a low voice. Everyone looked up as Clare entered, then let out a collective breath of relief or disappointment.