All Mortal Flesh

  “Trust me, when you’re fifty, it does. Anyway, do you know anything about her?”

  “She doesn’t sound familiar. What’s her first name?”

  “Uh . . . I don’t know. We haven’t gotten that informal yet.”

  “Doesn’t matter. There can’t be too many Jensens working out of Middletown. Let me make a few calls, and I’ll get back to you.”

  Russ thanked his former officer and hung up. As soon as his line was free, Harlene buzzed him. “Are you gonna give the morning briefing now?”

  “No,” he said. “I’m waiting for a callback. I’ll round up everybody as soon as I’m finished.”

  “Sure thing, Chief. I’ll let the guys know not to disturb you.”

  He hated the way people talked to him now. Four days ago, if he had told Harlene he was postponing the morning briefing, she would have made a crack about him getting lazy in his old age. It was if he had found himself in a foreign country, surrounded by natives who spoke at him very . . . slowly . . . and . . . clearly so he might understand.

  “Wait,” he said. “Is Lyle here yet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Will you ask him to come in?”

  “Sure thing.”

  The door opened within seconds, leading Russ to guess that not only had Lyle been in the building, he had been standing next to Harlene asking her about the morning’s events. The deputy chief strolled in and took one of the chairs, relocating a few file folders onto the floor. He tipped back on the rear legs, balancing himself on the toes of his boots.

  “You meet this investigator from the BCI yet?”

  If Lyle was surprised at Russ’s brusqueness, he didn’t show it. “Yep. Mark introduced us. She’s in the squad room right now, going over the initial reports and the autopsy.”

  “Did you call the BCI in on the case?”

  “What?” Lyle lurched forward as the chair crashed onto all four legs. “Hell, no! I’ve been trying to keep the lid on this thing since it happened. Why the hell would I invite the staties in?”

  Russ pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’ve been encouraging me to stay home and back off of the investigation. I thought maybe—”

  “You thought wrong, as the saying goes.”

  “Sorry.” Russ sighed. “But the only thing I can figure is that one of us blew the whistle. I mean, I’m not being irrational, right? I ought to welcome any and all help to bring in this guy, I know that, but Jesus Christ, the thought of one of my own guys calling down the staties . . .”

  The phone rang. Russ snatched it up. “Van Alstyne here,” he said, motioning Lyle to sit back down in his chair.

  “Hey, chief, it’s Nathan Bougeron.”

  “That was fast. Whattaya got for me?”

  “It was fast because your girl has made herself well known. Her name’s Emiley, Emiley-with-an-extra-e, by the way.”

  “An extra e?”

  “I think it stands for energetic. She’s been with the force for ten years now, at BCI for six. The guy I spoke to said she’s poised to become a senior investigator, if she wants the job.”

  “Senior investigator? After six years? That’s unbelievable. Why wouldn’t she want it?”

  Across the desk from him, Lyle was raising his bushy gray eyebrows.

  “My guy says she’s got her eye on politics. She has a master’s in psych, and she’s working on a law degree. The word is, when she finishes, she’ll jump ship to some district attorney’s office downstate.”

  “Huh. Well, she wouldn’t be the first to use the DA’s office as a launching pad. Does this mean that I can expect her to spend all of her time with her nose in a law book?”

  “Nunh-unh. She’s a tough cookie, according to my guy. Very, very focused. Here’s the kicker: She put in a couple of years in Violent Crimes, and then moved to Homicide for a couple more, but last year she was reassigned—my guy didn’t know, but he thinks she asked for the job—to the Ex squad.”

  “The what?”

  “Oh, sorry. That’s our nickname for it. The External Law Enforcement Investigation squad. The guys who work with DAs and county prosecutors to take down dirty cops in departments where they don’t have an internal affairs division.”

  Or where the IA department was corrupt as well. “Okay,” he said. “Yeah. I just never heard the nickname.” The Ex squad. Christ on a bicycle. What had the mayor said? You and the department need support. Yeah.

  “So I’m wondering, what’s going on up there? I can’t believe you’ve got a rotten officer.”

  Russ cleared his throat. “She’s helping us with a homicide.”

  “Really? Huh. Maybe my guy got his info messed up.”

  No. He didn’t.

  “Thanks for taking a look for me, Nathan. I appreciate it.”

  “Anytime, Chief. You let me know if I can do anything else for you. And say hi to all the guys.”

  “I will. Thanks.” After he hung up he said, “Nathan says hi.”

  “Talk’s cheap. Let him drive over here and buy me a drink.” Lyle leaned forward onto Russ’s desk, propping his elbows on a broadsheet from the department’s HMO and a smear of opened envelopes. “What about Jensen?”

  “She’s bright, ambitious, and evidently on her way to becoming the first female governor of New York, after a brilliant career in law enforcement and a successful stint as an ADA.”

  “Yeah? Then what’s she doing sitting in our squad room, drinking Harlene’s day-old coffee?”

  “Since she made investigator six years ago, she’s worked VCAP, Homicide, and the External Law Enforcement Investigation squad.”

  Lyle grew very still. Then he shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. If she’s all smoked to work for the DA’s office, she’s going to need to stay in tight with the rest of us out here humping our tails to catch the bad guys.”

  “Unless she wants to be able to tell the good people of New York how she brought down a crooked chief of police and the department he had in his back pocket.” He rolled his chair back. “Somebody in our department thinks I murdered my wife.”

  Lyle shook his head again. “No.”

  “You were the one who pointed out that I was a logical suspect.”

  “Yeah, but I was just trying to get you to see—”

  “Doesn’t matter. Jensen is going to tap me as a suspect.” He got up and paced across the floor. “It’s what I’d do if I were walking into this investigation. Hell, Lyle, it’s what you’d do if you and I weren’t friends.” He looked out the window. Same snow, same shoppers, same SUVs. “Let’s say you’re Jensen. Your boss at BCI has sent you out here because he believes I’ve killed my wife and I’m using the department to cover it up. You go over the records of the evidence so far. Do you find anything to rule that theory out?”

  “No.”

  “Hell, no. I’ve got no alibi for the time when the murder occurred. In fact, time of death was muddled because Meg Tracey left the door open and you guys never closed it.”

  Lyle dropped his gaze and mumbled something.

  “I’m not blaming you, Lyle. Linda was your friend, too. Everybody was shook up that evening. But to Jensen, it’s going to look like collusion. Now, add in the fact that my missing knife could be the murder weapon and e-mails on my wife’s computer suggest that she was seeing someone else when she died. You’re Jensen, with the mayor and the aldermen and the power of the BCI behind you. What are you going to do?”

  “Put you on leave. Immediately, if I can.”

  “She can. You should have heard the aldermen at the surprise meeting this morning. They were dropping fifty-pound hints that I take a week off.”

  “It’s times like these that being an elected sheriff would come in handy. No town board waiting in the wings to hand you a pink slip.”

  “Huh. So you boot the chief. But you’re also worried about the deputy chief, because he’s your suspect’s right-hand man. You can’t suspend him, though, because you need someone who can run the police dep
artment while you’re working the homicide.”

  Lyle’s mouth twisted in a sort of smile. “If she knew anything, she’d put Harlene in charge.”

  “You can bet Jensen thinks Harlene’s a gossipy old broad who should have been retired years ago. What do you do?”

  Lyle sighed. “I isolate him. Take him off the case and route all the investigation reports directly through me.”

  “Okay. So you and I can figure out which direction she’s going to take the investigation in. Here’s the tricky part: What’s she going to do in the next hour? And what does she think I’m going to do?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet. I figure I have three options. I could go back to my mom’s place, crawl into bed, and not come out again until spring or an indictment, whichever comes first. Or I could figure out some way to sidestep her, so that I can keep on with the investigation. I’m worried that if she likes me as the perp, she won’t pay enough attention to the other evidence lying around.” He paused. The light was changing outside. A little more white, a little less bright. As if ice were sheeting over the sky. More snow coming.

  “What’s the third option?”

  “I could eat my gun.”

  “Don’t joke about that.” Lyle’s mobile face was dead serious.

  Russ flipped his hand to show it was open. “Sorry.”

  “I think she’ll assume you’re going to go head to head with her,” Lyle said, dragging the conversation back to Russ’s question. “Once she pegs you as the prime suspect, she’s got to assume you’re going to be busy covering your ass with both hands. Maybe by hauling her back out to the mayor’s office for a showdown while the rest of us trash the files. Or manufacture some new evidence implicating somebody else.”

  Russ thought for a few seconds, then pushed away from the window frame. “I want you to do two things for me.”

  “Okay . . .” Lyle’s voice was tentative. “What?”

  “I want you to get me the registration info for the license number of the car the Tracey kid saw at my house. But before that, I want you to have an accident in the squad room.”

  “A what?”

  “Carry in some coffee or one of Harlene’s strudels and drop it all over the floor. Make it big and messy and make sure everybody’s paying attention to you.”

  “And in the meantime, you will be doing what, exactly?”

  “Getting out of Dodge.” He could see the question taking shape in his deputy chief’s mind. “It’ll be better if you don’t know anything else. Plausible deniability and all that. When you’ve got the car owner’s info, leave me a message on my cell phone.”

  “Leave you a message.”

  “I’m getting on in years. I may forget to turn it on.”

  “Uh-huh.” Lyle levered himself out of his chair. “We got fifty-odd years of law enforcement experience between us, and here we are, plotting like a couple of junior-grade James Bond wannabes.” He grinned up one side of his mouth. “I like that.” He stuck out his hand. “Good luck, Russ.”

  He left his office door open after Lyle left and listened as his deputy chief loudly asked Harlene if there was “anything good” in the kitchen. Of course there would be, since Harlene baked compulsively during the winter months and brought the resulting sugar bombs in to work so that her husband, Harold, fighting the onset of Type II diabetes, wouldn’t fall to temptation.

  Russ put his coat on and wrapped his old tartan scarf around his throat.

  He heard Harlene asking, “You want me to help you with any of that?” and Lyle refusing.

  Russ shoved his gloves into his coat pocket. Looked around the office. Was there anything he had to take with him?

  The clatter and clash from the squad room startled even him. He heard Harlene’s chair squeak, roll, and thud into her file cabinet. He glanced through his doorway in time to see her disappearing in the direction of the noise, which now consisted of loud swearing, shouts from someone whose uniform had been wrecked, and Kevin Flynn laughing hysterically.

  He stepped out into the dispatch room, closed his door behind him, and, unnoticed and unheard, left the building.

  TWENTY

  Driving away from the station house in his red pickup, Russ could have felt guilt, or anger, or panic. He guessed any of those would have been more appropriate than the almost giddy sense of escape that filled him. Maybe, after all those years of the straight and narrow, walking on the wrong side of the law had a certain wild appeal. That would explain a lot about his relationship with Clare.

  Thinking of her dampened his spirits, and the first left that led him out of town and toward his house extinguished them. His house. The thought of going back there yet another time nauseated him. He was going to have to sell it. Or better yet, burn it. Make it a pyre for his marriage. Slain jointly by a stranger’s knife and his own infidelity.

  He drove through the outskirts of town, into the farmland that rolled higher and higher out of the east, until it crashed against the mountains in the west. The sky was thicker now, the ice-pale cloud cover turning leaden. He realized he hadn’t listened to the news or caught a weather report in three days. He switched on the talk-radio station in time to catch the 9:00 A.M. highlights. War, a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, terrorist cells in the U.S., and a record-breaking deficit. New England was celebrating the Patriots making it to the Super Bowl. The North Country could expect a slowly developing storm to drop another four to six inches of snow within the next twenty-four hours.

  The rousing music of the Dr. Adele show swelled behind the psychologist’s voice, telling him today’s show was for all those women who couldn’t enjoy sex because they were self-conscious about their bodies.

  Christ. He snapped the radio off. If he hadn’t been depressed before, that would have done it for him.

  The Peekskill Road was empty of traffic. Empty of all signs of life around the widely spaced farmhouses, save for the threads of smoke rising from every chimney except his. And the folks who lived to his left, the Andersons. He frowned. Had something happened to the elderly—no. It was all right. They were away in Arizona.

  Good enough. He didn’t want any witnesses if Investigator Jensen came around asking questions.

  He powered up his driveway and parked in front of the barn door. He got out, hauled it wide open, and, getting back behind the wheel, inched his truck into its space next to Linda’s wagon.

  He grabbed his soft-sided CD holder and squeezed out the driver’s side, reflexively careful not to scratch the Volvo, and rumbled the big door shut along its track. He paused at the hard-packed walk to the kitchen and went instead to the front of the house. Wading through more snow was a small price to pay not to have to step into the room where his wife had—

  He forced his attention to unlocking the door. Inside, the air was so cold he could see his breath. Either one of the responders had turned the thermostat off, or they had run out of oil. There was a pronounced smell of cat, and he remembered Eric McCrea telling him about his wife’s new pet, and how it had been stuck inside after she had been—

  He realized the damn cat was probably a witness to the murder. Not that that was going to do him any good.

  He strode toward Linda’s tiny office, looking as little as possible to the left or right. He dropped into the desk chair and pushed the computer’s on button, hoping that the cold wouldn’t affect the machine. It slowly blinked into readiness, and he turned to a stack of blank CDs she kept at hand. He loaded one into the disk drive, opened the hard-drive menu, and started copying.

  E-mail, Word documents, spreadsheets, photos. Not knowing what might yield something useful, he copied it all. Browser, Web sites, fax program, music player. He went through three CDs, then four. While the computer burned data, he riffled through Linda’s paperwork again, looking for anything out of the ordinary, anything that would point to one direction or another.

  A notice popped up on the screen. DISK FULL. PLEASE INSERT ANOT
HER DISK AND PRESS CONTINUE. He released the CD drive, scooped out the disk, and replaced it with an empty one.

  The phone rang.

  He froze. In the silence between rings, the disk drive clicked smoothly into place.

  CONTINUE COPYING? The computer asked him.

  He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and thumbed it on. The house line rang again. His cell displayed its service logo. The house line rang again. The cell’s signal and battery indicators ramped up. The house phone rang again. The cell phone beeped loudly. Its screen read 2 MISSED CALLS. He thumbed the selection button. The screen displayed the numbers he had missed. Both were from the station.

  The answering machine picked up, and he heard his own voice asking the caller to leave a name and number.

  “This is Investigator Jensen of the BCI, looking for Russ Van Alstyne. Chief Van Alstyne, if you get this message, it’s very important that you contact me. I need to meet with you as soon as possible to discuss the direction of the case. Please call me at the station or on my cell phone at 518-555-1493.”

  He released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. She worked fast.

  He pressed the CONTINUE button on the screen. One more disk, and then he was gone. If he were Jensen, he’d be sending out squad cars to try to pick him up at the most likely locations. His house, Mom’s house, Janet’s farm. All addresses readily available from his personnel file.

  Unzipping the CD holder, he considered his options. He could blow town completely, find an Internet café in Saratoga and go over the files. Of course, if she put an APB out on him, that might not work so well. A public place was risky. He needed somewhere where he couldn’t be brought in or disturbed until after he’d had a chance to sift though the megabytes of information he’d taken from Linda’s computer. He needed a sanctuary.

  DISK FULL. PLEASE INSERT ANOTHER DISK AND PRESS CONTINUE.

  No time to download any more. He would have to hope he had gotten what he needed. He removed the disk, hit the CANCEL button, and directed the computer to shut itself off.