She closed her eyes. “Of course. I’ll do it. I’m on my way right now.”
“Can you find her place again?”
“The U.S. Army trusted me to fly very expensive helicopters over large stretches of unmarked territory without getting lost. I think I can find Old Scanadaiga Road.”
“Old Sacandaga Road.”
“That, too. Is her house locked? How do I get in?”
“Yes, her house is locked.” She could hear him restraining himself from commenting on her own habits. “The spare key is under the geranium pot farthest to the left on the front steps. Not the kitchen door, where you go in, but the front.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll keep the dogs as long as necessary. Just tell your mom to give me a call when she’s sprung”—she grinned at the noise he made—“and we’ll take it from there.”
“Thanks, Clare. I owe you one.”
“Your debt is forgiven. Now go and do likewise.”
He laughed. “Yes, Father Flanagan.”
She hung up, thinking she liked making Russ laugh. It almost made up for the leaden way her body responded to the idea of getting dressed and going back out. Parishioners had invited her to three cookouts, two fireworks-watching ensembles, and on a trip to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center for the concert tonight. She had declined them all, knowing that after celebrating two Eucharists and running the 10K race, the only thing she would feel up to doing was collapsing in front of the television. She pulled the linguine off the burner. “ ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends,’ ” she said, heading back upstairs to change.
Old Route 100 between Millers Kill and Margy Van Alstyne’s house was far busier than it had been on Thursday. Clare passed minivans crowded with sticky children, tiny cars with kayaks teetering on top, and bass-thumping stereos on wheels, filled with wind-whipped hair of indeterminate origin. Along the heavily wooded stretch she had to slow to a stop to accommodate a truck that seemed, at first glance, to be picking up National Guardsmen on maneuvers. It wasn’t until she got a closer look at the men straggling out of the forest that she saw the fluorescent orange and green splatters on their jackets and realized they were paintball players. Near the intersection of Route 100 and the Old Sacandaga Road, she saw no fewer than three buses headed back from rafting trips on the Hudson. She marveled that people would pay good money to get stuck, not to mention soaking wet, on a rubber raft on a day that had promised sixty-degree weather and rain.
The dogs, when she had found the key and unlocked the kitchen door, were as ecstatic to see her as they had been the last time. “Don’t get used to this,” she warned them. “I won’t always be here to rescue you from being left alone. No, Bob! Down!” She let them have the run of the backyard while she slung the already seriously depleted bag of kibble into her tiny trunk. She made a metal note to stop at the IGA and buy another fifty pounds before returning the dogs to Margy. God knew when Paul Foubert would return from Albany.
Returning to the kitchen to get the dogs’ bowls, she gave in to the temptation to take a peek at the front room. At first glance, it looked like a typical seventy-year-old lady’s living room: braided rug on the floor, comfortable well-worn furniture from the fifties, a prominently positioned television with a TV Guide and glasses on top. But the books piled on the coffee table had titles like Environmental Impact of Modern Manufacturing and The Consumers’ Guide to the Waste Stream. One wall was almost completely covered with framed photographs: small kids in ancient black and white who must have been Russ and his sister, modern color portraits of Janice’s three little girls. Margy at a sit-in, Margy beneath a banner reading SEEDS OF PEACE, and, on a page from a 1970 Time magazine, Margy face-to-face with Nelson Rockefeller, thrusting a framed picture toward the governor. Both of them were yelling at each other.
The picture Margy was holding in the magazine photo was hanging just below. Clare unhooked it from its nail and held it up. It showed a tall, too-thin young man, tan and shirtless, hair bleached blond from the sun, set off against exotic palms in the background. He could have been a late-sixties surfer, if not for the dog tags and the fatigues, and the M16 slung over his shoulder. She ran a finger over the glass. She had never imagined him that young. She would have been six or seven when this picture was taken, learning to read Dick and Jane books while he slept in mud and fought off intestinal parasites and tried to keep from getting killed every day. Their difference in age, which had never meant anything to her before, suddenly yawned wide, a vast chasm filled with events he had lived through as an adult that were nothing but stories and history and vague childhood memories to her.
Margy Van Alstyne would probably love to tell her stories about Russ as a young man. She could come out for a visit and hear about his childhood, and what he was like in high school, and where he went while he was in the service. Maybe she could find out more about his wife. Her grandmother’s voice broke in. If you don’t want to go to Atlanta, missy, you’d best not get on that train. She took a deep breath. Or, she could mind her own business and leave the Van Alstynes alone. She rehung the photograph carefully in its spot, squaring it just so with its neighbors. Then she retreated to the kitchen before she could yield to temptation again.
The ride back to Millers Kill took even longer than the ride out, in part due to the heavy end-of-the-day traffic and in part due to the necessity of driving slowly when the car was filled to capacity with dogs. It didn’t help that she felt irritated at her foray into Mrs. Van Alstyne’s living room. She was asked to do a simple favor for someone who had helped her out immeasurably by taking the dogs in the first place, and she had used it as an excuse to moon over the woman’s married son. It was just plain tacky, that’s what it was.
Everyone in the seminary had heard of some priest who had crossed the line between compassion and passion and broken up a marriage or two in the process. Nine times out of ten, it was a parishioner who had been in counseling, or the church secretary. Well, most of her counseling these days was with young engaged couples, and Lois was certainly no threat to her virtue. If she just showed a little more self-control, she wouldn’t have a problem.
There had been a time, when she was a lieutenant, that she had developed a terrific crush on an out-of-bounds man. He was a captain, directly above her in the chain of command, and if anything had happened between them, it could have meant both their jobs. Handling her feelings, she had discovered, meant never lingering over the thought of him, never daydreaming, never fantasizing. Eventually, her tour of duty finished, she left, and within a year she couldn’t recall what it was that had gotten her so hot and bothered in the first place.
By the time she pulled into the rectory driveway, her little car shimmying from Gal and Bob’s excited wriggling, she felt better. Self-discipline was something she knew how to do. As if in reward for her good thoughts, there was a message on her answering machine.
“Clare? Hi, it’s Paul. I hope you can hear this okay, I’m using the pay phone in the lobby and the thing dates back to the Eisenhower administration. Great news! Emil has woken up and is responding to speech! He’s having trouble talking, but the neurologist says that’s normal at this point, that it doesn’t mean anything. He recognized me, and his kids, and he managed to squeeze our hands a little. I feel so grateful, I can’t tell you. I hope Bob and Gal are doing okay”—the dogs both barked sharply when they heard their names—“and that they’re not wearing you out. I’ll try to reach you again as soon as I know something new. Thanks again for everything, Clare.”
“You see?” she said to the Berns. “Doing good is its own reward. Let’s go make some dinner.”
Two plates of linguini later, stretched out on the sofa with a glass of Chianti, watching the Boston Pops Esplanade concert, Clare was beginning to think she ought to look into getting a dog. It was fun having someone to talk to in the kitchen, even if neither Gal nor Bob was a great conversationalist. And seeing them stretched out on the hardwood floor was deeply satisfying. It made h
er feel English. The Vicar of Dibley crossed with a James Herriot story. Maybe she could get herself one of those canvas coats, and a walking stick. She yawned.
Gal and Bob got up, shook themselves, and walked into the foyer.
“What is it? Do you two want to go out?”
At the word out, both dogs barked. Clare groaned. As she rolled off the sofa, they began to whine and pant, and by the time she joined them in the foyer, their nails were clicking madly on the wooden floor as they jostled each other to be first out the door.
She opened the door to the damp and cold and the dogs bounded out, ran straight to the edge of the sidewalk, turned to look at her, and began barking.
“Shhh! Shhh!” She wrestled on her sneakers and pulled a running shell with reflective stripes over her head. Where had she tossed those leashes? In the kitchen? When she finally stepped out onto the front porch, the Berns ran to her, leaping joyously and barking even louder. “Sssh! It’s nine o’clock, for heaven’s sake. This isn’t the country! I’ve got neighbors.” The dogs promptly sat, tails thumping, looking at her expectantly. “I get the feeling that, unlike me, you two didn’t get enough exercise today. Am I right? C’mon, then, we can walk down to the park. If they haven’t canceled because of the weather, we might even see some fireworks.”
Each wrought-iron lamp along Church Street had its own halo, its light a soft glow in the mist. The usually strident sodium orange looked like gaslight, shading the red-white-and-blue bunting, flickering over the slick leaves rustling in nearby trees. The dogs had fallen silent as soon as Clare had led them out on the leashes, and she could hear far-off noises amplified in the developing fog. There were few people on the sidewalks at this hour. Clare would hear footsteps clicking and someone would emerge from the mist, smile or look startled, and then vanish behind her. It might have been unnerving if she had been alone, but walking behind two large and well-behaved dogs made it a genteel adventure, like strolling through Victorian London. She added Sherlock Holmes to her list of English images.
They crossed Main Street, turned down Mill, and continued toward Riverside Park. As they got closer, she could hear distant voices in a current of many conversations. A flicker of excitement made her smile. The fireworks must still be on. She picked up her pace, hurrying past shabby shops and mill offices whose brick facades were the color of old blood in the dark.
From the abandoned textile mill on its left to the decrepit pulping mill on its right, the park was set off from the street by almost half a mile of high iron-rail fencing. The central entrance, which had marked the start of the race this afternoon, had a wide ornate gate overtopped by a wrought-iron arch, the whole fixture a monument to the prosperity that had vanished from the area after World War II. It was that gate she was shooting for, but she had scarcely passed the textile mill when the first muffled thud sounded somewhere over the river and she saw a dazzle of green light. A chorus of oohs and aahs came from inside the park.
The trees grew close along the fence and the underbrush had been left to fend for itself, so it was hard to see. She couldn’t even make out the next explosion, but in the fog-reflected light, she could see a faster way into the park: an unobtrusive door-size gate almost indistinguishable from the fence around it. A century before, it must have been the quick lunch-hour entrance for the mill workers.
She pulled the dogs up short, almost jerking herself off her feet in the process, and pushed against the gate. She was actually surprised when it opened. Bob and Gal didn’t need any encouragement to desert the sidewalk. They plowed through the underbrush, sending whip-thin branches lashing back toward Clare, showering her with the collected damp off the leaves. When they emerged, Clare’s sneakers were thoroughly soaked and her hair was clinging to her head in wet clumps.
Another explosion, a halogen-bright expanding sphere that collapsed into a rain of stars. It was still too thickly wooded for her to see clearly. “Come on, guys, this way,” she said, heading toward the water. The next explosion was a series of green and pink shell bursts, accompanied a second later by a staccato of ear-popping bangs. She glanced down at Bob and Gal, but they were too busy covering every square inch of ground for scents to notice what was going on in the sky. Bob lurched toward a tree to leave his mark and Clare followed, her face still turned toward the sky. “Oh, look at that, I love that one,” she said as a series of red, white, and blue lights fountained across the sky. The dogs tugged her farther, snuffling and peeing as they went. A swarm of yellow lights spread round and flat, creating shapes in the middle of a circle. “Is that a smiley face? It is! Good grief.”
Gal whined.
Clare bent down and ruffled Gal’s silky hair. “Don’t like smiley faces? I can’t say I blame you.”
The dog didn’t respond to Clare. She quivered, body tense, nose pointed toward the thicket of brush and trees dividing the park from the mill. Bob turned in exactly the same position. Both dogs whined.
“What is it, boy?” Clare scratched Bob’s broad head. “Did you see a squirrel?”
The dogs pulled toward the thicket. “Is anybody there?” Clare asked, feeling foolish. Far away from the spectators at the water’s edge, hidden in the shadow of the three-story mill wall, the long stretch of vegetation was probably the perfect spot for necking. She didn’t want the dogs to flush out some poor pair of half-naked teenagers.
Gal growled, stopped, then barked once. Bob stopped beside her, growling. The hairs on the back of Clare’s neck rose, and she involuntarily looked behind her. “Who’s there?” she asked, infusing her voice with every ounce of authority she could muster.
The mist lit up as whirls of green and pink spun overhead. There was an explosive sound from the fireworks, but nothing except rustling leaves ahead. She knew she ought to just go. Take the dogs to the waterside and watch the end of the display. She could easily find someone with a cell phone and call the police if she honestly thought something was not right. She should go.
She tugged the leashes up to move the dogs toward the thicket. “Come on,” she said quietly. As they drew closer, Gal began whimpering again. The dogs slowed, too well trained to refuse but clearly reluctant. Two yards away, they both dropped to their bellies, whining.
Despite the cool dampness on her face and her wet hair, Clare felt hot prickles down her arms and along her back. She blinked, light-headed for a second, and realized she had been breathing too fast and too shallow. She opened her mouth and took a deep, shuddering breath that didn’t do anything to stop her heart from skittering inside her chest.
She tugged the leashes again, but the dogs had reached their limit. They whined, then whined even more fretfully when she stepped past them to part the branches of a bittersweet-entwined sumac to peer inside. Nothing. She made herself step through the undergrowth and brush, pushing through something with tiny twigs and clumps of berries that tapped against her cheeks and fingers. Nothing. She stubbed her sneaker-shod toe against something hard and swallowed a scream before she heard the clanking sound and felt a pipe rolling beneath her foot. She had stumbled across the graveyard of an old plumbing system. She squatted down and waved through the darkness until her knuckles hit something—smooth marble or polished granite. The shape of it under her hands made her think of a sarcophagus. She thrust the morbid idea from her mind. Rectangular, rounded edges—a basin? Her fingers slipped through something wet clinging to the cool stone interior. She gasped and jerked her hand away, lurching to her feet. Then she realized what she had found. One of the old watering troughs Russ had mentioned. It smelled of old water and decayed leaves and the iron tang of rust. The dogs keened behind her, and in a split second her fear flashed into irritation. “What is it?” she snapped. “If there’s some drowned cat in here, I’m going to be—”
Overhead, a white explosion cascaded into yellow and purple, and blue spheres filled the sky. A crash of explosions battered the air. She could see the watering trough now, bone-pale, long as a child’s coffin, mottled by the leaves?
?? shadows. And there, finally, was the reason for the dogs’ whimpering. Clare saw the fireworks reflecting in thick black blood, winking along the edges of torn flesh, illuminating dull, flat eyes.
Over the cacophony of the fireworks’ finale, she heard a wavering, high-pitched moan, rising and rising until she cried out, her voice choking, and she realized it was her. She was making the terrible noise as the cloudbursts of light exploded overhead, revealing and concealing the puffy, battered thing that had once been Bill Ingraham.
Chapter Ten
The crime scene was lighted like a carnival midway by the time Russ arrived. Two tall tungsten lamps flooded the ground and trees with a white glare, turning every shadow into a razor-edged anti-leaf and non-branch. The red lights of two squad cars circled monotonously next to what the Millers Kill PD referred to as “the meat wagon”—the squat mortuary transport used when there was no hope the ambulance would be useful. From behind a taut yellow tape, a dozen or more flashlights bobbed aimlessly as their owners, packing blankets and coolers, crowded in to get a glimpse of something much more exciting than fireworks. White, red, and yellow reflected off the lowering mist until the night itself glowed and Russ thought he could see individual drops of water suspended in midair.
Mark Durkee, who had been bumped up the seniority ladder when they’d hired Kevin Flynn, was working the crowd, notebook out, presumably taking names and statements. Russ ducked under the tape and waved at Lyle MacAuley. “Hey,” Russ said. “You set him on that?” He gestured with his head toward Durkee.
“He thought of it on his own. He read up on spotting perps who return to the scene and on this new technique of taking pictures of the spectators before running them off. It gets the possible witnesses on film, so we can match ’em up with their statements. He whipped out one of those little disposable cameras and went to it. He’s got a lot on the ball.”