All Mortal Flesh

  She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “No. No, he isn’t.”

  He pierced her with his black eyes. “I’m not here to judge you, girl. You think you’re the first sheep to wander out of the fold because greener pastures beckon?” He reached for his tea. “At least you show some originality. Most priests who dabble in adultery go for the music director or one of the warden’s wives. The town’s chief of police—that’s novel. Not too bright, but novel.”

  “Don’t hold back. Please, tell me what you think.”

  “Straight talking is exactly what you need at this point, Ms. Fergusson.”

  He was right, and she knew it. The deacon made for a strange confidante—he didn’t approve of women priests, he was formal to the point of eccentricity, and, most damning of all, he reported directly to her boss. But there was something about his dry, unsentimental demeanor that had made it easy, over the past two months, to tell him everything. About how lonely she had been, a stranger in a strange place, looking out onto a sea of faces waiting expectantly for her to either fail miserably or to walk on water. About making friends with the only person in town who looked at her and saw plain old Clare Fergusson instead of a bundle of assumptions in a dog collar. About walking farther and farther away from the narrow, well-lit path with Russ Van Alstyne, talking and laughing and ignoring the signs screaming DANGER: OFF TRAIL and ENTERING UNPATROLLED LAND and GO NO FARTHER THIS MEANS YOU and then being surprised—surprised!—when she looked around and found she was utterly lost.

  Something of the wilderness must have shown in her face, because Aberforth leaned forward awkwardly against his Eames-spindled knees and said, “I haven’t said anything to the bishop yet, but you’re going to need to come to a decision soon, Ms. Fergusson. Not for him or for me or for the people in your parish. For the sake of your own soul.”

  She nodded mechanically. “I know, Father. And I’ve . . .” Her voice faded off. How could she describe the past few weeks? Days? These last terrible hours? “I’ve taken steps.”

  She picked up her mug of tea, watching with a clinical interest as her hand shook. “Unless something extraordinary happens, I do not expect to see Russ Van Alstyne again.”

  TWO

  Meg Tracey wasn’t the sort of woman who had to keep tabs on her friends. She enjoyed her own privacy too much to intrude on others, and she frequently quoted the phrase “An it harm no one, do what you will,” which she had picked up in a book on Wicca she bought at the Crandall Library’s annual sale for a buck.

  She liked to think of herself as a neo-pagan and threw an annual winter solstice party with lots of torches and greenery and drinking of grog, but she wasn’t interested enough to dig much deeper into the philosophical underpinnings. It was enough for her that it annoyed the hell out of her intensely Catholic family (she had been born Mary Margaret Cathwright) and that it distinguished her from the vast majority of her neighbors in Millers Kill, a town she frequently described as “three stop signs east of Nowhere.”

  It was a mutual loathing of the poky little burg their husbands had brought them to that first threw Meg and Linda Van Alstyne together. On the surface, they had nothing in common. Meg was the full-time mother of three, while Linda, childless, was busy starting up her own business. Meg’s husband was a former peace activist who taught at Skidmore College; Linda’s husband “retired” to run the Millers Kill Police Department after a twenty-five-year career in the army. Linda was a meticulous homemaker whose two-hundred-year-old farmhouse was a showplace for her decorating skills; Meg’s house, like her, was careless and eclectic, filled with child-battered furniture and dog hair. Linda guarded her space, inviting few people into her sanctuary; Meg’s family room was always filled with sprawls of teenage boys, her kitchen overrun with giggles of girls.

  At an estate auction in Glens Falls, Meg (scouting out the Adirondack cedar chairs) overheard Linda (examining the hand-forged iron trivets) cracking a joke about Millers Kill (the punch line had something to do with dairy farmers and cow insemination). She introduced herself. Their discussion led to lunch, which led to an invitation to Meg’s for a blender of strawberry daiquiris, which led to an impromptu dinner invitation since Linda’s husband was working late. As Linda’s husband frequently worked late, dinners together became a more-or-less regular thing until Linda’s custom curtain business began to take off in a serious way. Still, Linda touched base with Meg by phone if not in person almost every day. Especially since her husband dropped the bomb on her. Which was why, a full forty-eight hours after their last conversation, Meg was worried.

  “I haven’t heard from her since Saturday afternoon,” she said into the cordless phone tucked beneath her chin.

  “Maybe she’s at the Algonquin Hotel. Didn’t you say she’s spending a lot of time there on the renovation?”

  “Not all weekend.”

  “Honey, the woman does have a life. Give her a break.” In the background, she could hear the sound of rattling file-cabinet drawers and footsteps. Instructors in anthropology didn’t get large, soundproofed offices. “Maybe she went out Saturday night, picked up some young stud, and has been holding him hostage ever since.”

  “I wish. That’s what I’d be doing. And don’t you forget it.”

  He snorted. “I believe you.”

  “So if you think you can get away with any private counseling with one of those nubile young hotties you have floating around campus . . .”

  “Please. I value my equipment too much to risk losing it.” She could hear Deidre slamming through the front door. “Mo-om! I’m home!”

  Meg lowered her voice. “Get home early tonight and I’ll show you how much I value your equipment.”

  Jack laughed. “I’m going to start paying all your friends’ husbands to misbehave. I’m going to find Russ Van Alstyne and plant a big wet sloppy one on him.”

  “What? What?”

  “Ever since he told Linda he was having an affair, you’ve been a total tiger kitten. Rrowr.”

  Meg giggled. “Just reminding you how good you’ve got it.”

  “Mo-om! I need a ride to piano!”

  “I gotta go,” Meg said. “Deidre’s bellowing. Hold that thought.”

  “Faster, pussycat! Faster, faster!”

  She could hear Jack laughing as she hung up. He was right, she thought, gathering up her coat and car keys. She had been keeping very close tabs on him since the morning Linda, ping-ponging between fear and rage, had told Meg about her husband’s infidelity. It wasn’t that Meg thought she had anything to worry about. On the other hand, Linda hadn’t thought she had anything to worry about, either.

  Despite the steadily falling snow, Meg drove to the piano teacher’s with only half a mind on the road. Deidre, plugged into her MP3 player in the backseat, didn’t say a word until a quick “See ya later, Mom,” punctuated by a slamming door.

  Now she had an hour to kill. Meg tried Linda one more time on her cell phone. The number rang and rang, until a recorded male voice clicked on.

  “You’ve reached the home of Russ and Linda Van Alstyne. Leave a message.” Meg hung up. Without consciously deciding, she switched on her headlights and turned left out of the piano teacher’s driveway, headed toward the Van Alstynes’.

  Linda lived on an old country road halfway between Millers Kill and Cossayuharie, dotted with houses that had been farms in the nineteenth century, widely spaced, with quarter-mile-long driveways. Good business for Meg’s son Quinn, who had kitted out his 200,000-mile pickup with a plow to earn extra money, but way too remote for Meg’s taste.

  The Van Alstynes’ house was set back, high on a treeless rise that gave them sweeping views in the summer but looked desolate and wind-scoured in the winter. The long, long drive hadn’t been plowed anytime recently. Meg drove up as far as her Saab would take her, riding in the ruts left by the last vehicle to brave the hill, but around the halfway point she slowed, skidded, and slipped back several feet. Admitting defeat, she yanked on the park
ing brake and got out to walk the rest of the way.

  Despite the gathering twilight, there weren’t any lights on that Meg could see. On the other hand, she would have to circle around to the west side of the house in order to spot the windows in Linda’s upstairs workshop. She banged on the mudroom door. No answer. Maybe Linda was out? Meg crossed the end of the drive and peered through the barn windows. No, there was her station wagon.

  It was turning back toward the house that she noticed the odd blot in the snow near the doorway. She recrossed the drive to look at it. The falling snow was beginning to cover it, but she could see it was pink and slushy, as if someone had plunged a spoonful of spaghetti sauce into the snow and stirred vigorously. At the sight of it, something cooled in the back of her brain, and she suddenly noticed the rhythm of her heartbeat making its way to the very edge of her skin.

  She couldn’t think what it might be. But she really, really didn’t want to consider it.

  She almost went back to her car. She would have to leave soon, to pick Deidre up on time. She examined the door, the granite step beneath it, the spotless bronze handle. Nothing out of place. Nothing odd. She took hold of the handle and turned it.

  The mudroom was dark and cramped. “Linda?” she called. There was a thump and a rumble, like a subterranean beast waking up hungry, and Meg jumped in her skin until she realized it was just the furnace kicking in. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said, impatient with her imagination. She wiped her boots off on the bristly mat and opened the door to the kitchen.

  She saw what was on the floor there.

  For a moment, none of it made sense; then the reality of what she was seeing slammed into her and her lungs and throat filled with a scream that would have torn her voice clean out of her—

  —and she heard a creak. Beyond the kitchen.

  Ohmygod he’s still here he’s still here whoever did this is still here.

  Meg tumbled backward out of the mudroom door and ran, slipping, rolling, slopping through the snow, catching herself on her car’s hood, flinging herself behind the wheel. She twisted the key so hard in the ignition the starter motor ground its teeth, then threw the stick into reverse and gunned down the drive, one arm twisted across the seat back, the other barely keeping the wagon from sliding into the snowbanks lining the narrow way. She backed straight into the road without looking in either direction and slammed on the brakes, blocking both lanes of traffic.

  She stared up the driveway. There was nothing stirring. No hand or face appeared at the open mudroom door. Then, with a suddenness that made her flinch, an orange-striped cat darted through the open door and bounded over the snow toward the barn.

  Meg’s head fell forward onto her steering wheel. The cat. She had forgotten the cat. Linda had visited the shelter the same day she gave her husband his walking papers. She had told Meg his allergies kept her from owning a cat for years, but they weren’t going to hold her back one minute longer.

  Her whole arm trembling, Meg reached for the phone on the passenger’s seat. It was almost too heavy for her to lift. She dialed 911.

  “Nine-one-one Emergency Services. Please state your name and the nature of your emergency.”

  “I’m . . .” Meg took a breath. “I’m Meg Tracey. There’s been a—someone’s been killed.”

  “Where are you, ma’am? Are you safe?”

  Was she safe? Oh, God. Meg smashed the door lock button.

  “Ma’am? Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Yeah. I think so. I think I’m safe. I’m not in the house. I mean, I was, but now I’m in my car. Across the road. Please, you’ve got to send someone.”

  The dispatcher’s voice was both calm and authoritarian. “I’m already alerting the police and ambulance service, ma’am. Tell me where you are.”

  “398 Peekskill Road.”

  There was a crackle over the phone. Then the dispatcher again, this time alarmed. “Did you say 398 Peekskill Road?”

  “Yes! For God’s sake, hurry.”

  “Stay right where you are, ma’am. The first car will be there within five minutes. Don’t go back into the house.” The dispatcher sounded shaky now, like someone reciting a well-worn prayer during a moment of crisis.

  “I won’t. I—”

  The dispatcher hung up. Meg stared at the phone. Weren’t they supposed to keep her on the line until someone got there? Inside her warming car, she shivered. She wrapped her arms around herself and settled in to wait for someone to deliver her from this nightmare.

  THREE

  There are moments in life that are between: between the blow and the pain, between the phone ringing and the answer, between the misstep and the fall. One that comes to everyone is a moment, or three, or five, between sleeping and waking, when the past has not yet been re-created out of memory and the present has made no impression. It is a moment of great mercy; disorienting, like all brushes with grace, but a gift nonetheless.

  Russ Van Alstyne was floating in this moment.

  He rolled over and emerged from a dreamless sleep like a diver floating to the surface of the ocean. The room he was in was dark, tiny, not his. He had never made up stories about the cracks in the plaster ceiling, and he had never tried to replace the lopsided overhead glass light. The room was neither dark nor light but thick with shadows, and he lay in the comfortable bed with quilts rucked up beneath his chin and wondered if it was day or night. Was it summer or winter or spring or fall? His hand moved between thick, thousand-wash sheets. Was he alone or was . . . ?

  That thought tumbled him back into his life.

  He pressed his face toward the feather pillow, desperately reaching for the last handhold on the vanishing train of sleep, but that car was gone, and he was well and truly awake. In an upstairs bedroom at his mother’s house. He eyed the small windows in the kneehole wall, where gray light leaked in around the brittle green shades. Probably late afternoon. He should call the station and get a status report from Lyle MacAuley. Things had been dead quiet since New Year’s, thank God. The only open case they had was the death of Herb Perkins’s border collie. Somebody had lured the dog out of the barnyard and butchered it. Gruesome but not urgent. Lyle was checking out the extremely long list of people who might have disliked the foul-tempered Perkins enough to give him the Millers Kill equivalent of the horse’s head between the sheets.

  He dropped his hand over his eyes. He could identify with the poor dumb dog. Get tempted out of your home by a forbidden treat and next thing you know, your guts are steaming in the snow next to you.

  No. He wasn’t going to start feeling sorry for himself again. He had too many things to do. Empty the woodstove ashes and restock the bin. Get a head start on shoveling out the driveway. Offer to help his mom with dinner.

  He wondered how he was going to manage any of these when he couldn’t summon the will to get out of bed. He checked his watch, holding his arm out straight and squinting to bring the face into view. It was three o’clock on Monday. And he was still alive. Not doing much, but still here. That was something, wasn’t it?

  He heard the stairs creaking, quiet footfalls outside his door. He shut his eyes and let his hand fall relaxed over the quilt, putting off for a little more time the minute he would have to emerge in the land of the living again. The steps retreated downstairs, and he sighed. Christ, here he was, fifty years old and hiding from his mother. Could he possibly be any more pitiful?

  With that, he tossed off the covers and swung out of bed. He was completely clothed, except for his socks, and as he pulled them on he tried out his game face. Capable. Stable. A guy who can Deal with Things. He stood and checked himself out in the dresser mirror. Okay. No stains. No bad bed head—although if he didn’t get to the barber soon, he might as well start wearing a ponytail like one of those idiot downstaters in the throes of a midlife crisis.

  He did not meet his own eyes.

  He opened the door onto an upper landing masquerading as a miniature hallway. In the bedroom opposite, twi
n beds frothed with pink gingham and lace and heaps of stuffed animals, ready for his nieces to sleep over. He shuffled down the first flight and paused on the turning. He could hear voices from the kitchen. His mom and . . . he eased down a few more steps . . . his sister.

  “. . . yet?” Janet was saying.

  “No. He got in a little before lunchtime, looking like death warmed over. He went straight to bed. I didn’t ask.”

  “What’s going on with Linda?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trying not to interfere.”

  “Has he talked to a lawyer yet?”

  “As near as I can tell, he doesn’t want to consider it.”

  “Oh, for chrissakes.”

  “Janet . . .” His mother’s warning tone. God help the child who swore or blasphemed in front of her. Even if that child was a forty-six-year-old mother of three.

  “Sorry.” A chair scraped the floor. “But really, Mom. She could be clearing out their accounts while he mopes over here.”

  “If she does, he’ll have to deal with it. I’m not pushing him into a divorce, and I’m not telling him to go back to his wife. I’m keeping my mouth shut.”

  He was about to stomp down the rest of the stairs and announce himself when Janet said, “I can’t believe you! When I was thinking about splitting up with Mike, you were falling all over yourself with advice!”

  Russ stopped, one stockinged foot poised over a stair tread. Janet? Almost left her husband? Didn’t anyone tell him anything?

  “Sweetie, you know I love Mike like he was a son. Any advice I gave you was meant to help the both of you. It’s not the same with Russ and Linda. It’s no secret I never really took to her.”

  No shit, Russ thought.

  “If I start bad-mouthing his wife, who is it fixing to get hurt when they get back together?”