In the Bleak Midwinter

  He grinned. “You are that,” he said, picking up the receiver. “Hello?”

  Clare went into the chilly mudroom to retrieve her boots and jacket. She looked glumly out the window. When had it started to snow? Please God, let the plows be out and the roads clear. She didn’t relish the idea of getting stuck between here and the town. She carried her things back into the kitchen. “Russ?” she asked.

  He waved her off, still holding the phone. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’ll be there. Half an hour, forty-five minutes at the most.” He hung up the phone and leaned on it, shaking his head.

  “I was going to impose on you for a ride into town, since it’s really coming down out there. But I can see it’s a bad time . . .” She bit her lower lip, unsure if she should ask what was wrong or not.

  He passed a hand over his face. “That was the night dispatch out of Glens Falls. A motorist called in what he thought was a deer beside the road. It was a body. Durkee and Flynn went to check it out. Wallet was in the guy’s pants.” He looked at her. “It’s Darrell McWhorter. He’s been shot to death.”

  CHAPTER 15

  If Katie McWhorter had resembled a frozen story-book princess in death, her father looked like roadkill. Russ tried to summon some basic human identity with the corpse, but the only emotion he could come up with was irritation that Darrell had died before Russ had had a chance to dig any more information out of him. That, and the conviction that the world—or at least his small corner of it—was a slightly cleaner place tonight.

  He and Clare had been the last to arrive at the scene on the old Schuylerville Road. Durkee and Flynn had done a good job securing the area, with tape and flares and cones to redirect the infrequent traffic to the other side of the road. The state crime scene unit was already in place. Two technicians this time, since it wasn’t a matter of humping the equipment a half-mile into the woods. They were working as fast as they could, racing the snow that had already covered up tire tracks and footprints, turning Darrell into a blurred heap. Russ turned his collar up against the thick flakes melting along the back of his neck, and wished he had stopped to get his hat. The snow was wetting his unprotected glasses, turning the scene into a kaleidoscope of splashing red lights and a blur of white.

  Darrell had died from a single gunshot at the back of his head, delivered only inches away. He had died with his coat on, unzipped, falling face forward onto the narrow pull-off, just missing the guardrail. He had died with a half-smoked cigarette in his fingers. The soggy butt was in a plastic baggy in the evidence box right now.

  “Whaddya think?” Mark Durkee swung his flashlight in the direction of the state trooper who was methodically combing through the snow between the body and the road.

  “I think he has a better chance of finding the winning lottery ticket than finding a shell casing in all that,” Russ said. “We’ll just have to cross our fingers and hope Dvorak can give us ballistics information from the autopsy.”

  “Actually, I meant, what do you think happened?”

  Russ glanced down the road, past the ambulance with its anonymous, snow-suited paramedics, past his pickup, where Clare sat steaming at his orders not to leave the cab. “He was in a car,” Russ said, recreating the scene in his mind. “Not his car. The killer was driving. McWhorter wants a smoke. They’re going someplace . . . not local. He doesn’t want to wait for his nic fix until they get there. The killer says, no smoking in my car. But I’ll pull off up ahead, you can get out, have one there. McWhorter gets out. The killer gets out, maybe to brush snow off the rear window or snap the wiper blades. There aren’t any cars going by. It’s an opening, and the killer takes it. Bang, he does McWhorter, gets back in the car, and drives off. Anybody hears the gunshot, they’d think it was backfire, or someone jacking deer.” He looked past the guardrail, where a few stunted sumacs thinned out as the land fell away into a sloping valley. On the opposite hillside, a mile or so away, he could see the lights of two or three farms. “It’s been coming down hard. If the killer had been a little luckier, Darrell here would have been a mound of snow covered up by the plows when they came through.”

  “That’s somebody very cool. Somebody who can put it all together fast.”

  “Yeah. Or somebody who has fantasized about killing McWhorter so often that when the opportunity arose, she was ready to snatch it.”

  “She?”

  “Sure. Don’t be a sexist, Mark. You think only men can kill?”

  “Hell, no. I’m a married man.”

  Russ laughed. The technician waved at them. “We’ve got all we’re going to get,” he shouted. “Tell the medics they can bag him.” Durkee nodded and trudged off through the growing drifts toward the ambulance.

  A van was coming up the road, slowing down, then pulling in past the crime scene. CHANNEL 7: LIVE! LATE BREAKING! Russ read on its side. He knew it was fashionable to bash the press, but publicity could be a big assist in a case. There was a reason the FBI fought to keep America’s Most Wanted on the air. He watched a burly guy unload a hand-held camera. He’d have to give them the usual speech about not releasing the identity until the family had been notified. Would anything be likely to shake loose if he mentioned the probable connection to the previous murder and the abandoned baby?

  He waved Durkee over again. “Mark, as soon as you can wrap this up, I want you to head over to Geoffrey and Karen Burnses’ house and find out where they’ve been this evening. Do they own a gun, all that. Ask to see the inside of their cars. If they give you any problems, call me. We’ll get a warrant tonight, if necessary.”

  “Okay. Want me to bring them in for questioning?”

  “Go with your gut. You get a reasonable suspicion, go ahead. But remember, these two are the sort to sue the department for false arrest, so make sure you cross your T’s and dot your I’s.”

  “Will do, Chief.”

  “As soon as I’m done with the TV crew, I’m going to pay a visit to McWhorter’s daughter Kristen. See if after two years, she finally agreed to meet with her dear old dad tonight.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Clare announced when Russ climbed into his truck.

  “Congratulations,” he said, tossing his parka in the back. The cab was almost too warm, undoubtedly the result of leaving Clare in possession of the keys.

  “I’m going to come with you when you go to talk with Kristen.”

  Russ buckled his seatbelt and shifted the pickup into gear. “No, you’re not. I said I’d drop you home, and I will. I didn’t say anything about making you junior deputy. And what makes you think I’m going to talk with Kristen anyway?”

  “She’s a logical suspect, isn’t she?”

  “So are the Burnses.” He cautiously pulled into the road. The slap of the wipers barely kept up with the pelting snow. “As a matter of fact, they’re the only ones I can think of who had reason to kill both Katie and her father. McWhorter did say he wouldn’t let them have custody of Cody this morning, right?”

  Silence. He risked letting his eyes leave the road and glanced over at Clare. She was limned by the dashboard light, arms wrapped around herself, frowning. “What?” he said.

  She hummed in the back of her throat.

  “What, Clare?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he could see her turn toward him. “I’ve been debating telling you something. I’m not sure if it’s covered by pastoral confidence or not, since it was kind of in a public place. Heck, for all I know, Lois could have overheard it.”

  “What?”

  “This morning, things seemed to be going well at first. I thought we had convinced McWhorter to release Cody to the Burnses. But then, just like that, he changed his mind. Karen went absolutely wild. She was yelling, ‘I could kill you’ at McWhorter.” Clare hunched her shoulders and sighed.

  “They do start to look more and more like couple number one, don’t they?”

  “Was McWhorter killed and then dumped?” she asked abruptly.

  “Nope. He got out of
the car and was shot there on the side of the road.” Flashing yellow lights up ahead. Plows and sanders were out, trying to keep up with the relentless accumulation of snow.

  “Why would he be in a car with the Burnses? Where does this road go?”

  “Away from town, it heads toward Schuylerville and Saratoga and the Northway. As for why he’d be in the car with them, I’d guess they were making a payoff.”

  Clare shook her head. “No. Even if they were going to exchange money for the baby, which would be a complete turnaround from their earlier position, why would they be heading out of town together? McWhorter was . . . not smart, exactly, but crafty. Looking out for himself as well as the main chance. Why agree to go off on a lonely road with someone who’d been screaming she was going to kill him this morning?”

  He tried to come up with a reason that made sense. The frustrating feeling that this case was getting more complicated rather than less was creeping up like a fog around his head. It had been a long, hard day, and he wanted to go home and tumble into bed and forget half-frozen corpses and bloody snow and shotgun-toting teens and sisters who cried until their cheeks ran black.

  “The Northway—that’s the highway that runs the length of the state, right?”

  “Route Eighty-seven, right.”

  “That’s how you get to Albany.”

  “Yeah . . .” he nodded. His head was working slowly, but it was working. “Katie’s things. McWhorter and whoever killed him could have been headed for Albany to get something from the house she lived in.”

  “You haven’t been there, yet, have you?”

  “No, the Albany P.D. is supposed to cover that.” His numb brain finally sparked the right connections. “Shee—it!” he said, snatching at the radio. “Do you remember the address?”

  Clare spread her hands helplessly. Russ clicked on the mike. “Dispatch, this is Chief Van Alstyne of the Millers Kill P.D. Can you connect me direct to cruiser Fifty-seven-fifteen?”

  There was a blare of static and then Kevin Flynn’s voice from the speaker. “Fifty-seven-fifteen. Go ahead.”

  “Kevin? This is the chief. Cancel the Burnses. I want you and Mark to go to the station, get the Katie McWhorter file, and find the address of her student digs in Albany. Then get on the horn to Albany and have them send someone there immediately. I think whoever killed McWhorter may be headed for that house.”

  “Ten-four, Chief. Fifty-seven-fifteen out.”

  Clare looked out the window at the snow-blotched roadway. “You think they might catch the killer?”

  “Maybe. The paramedics weren’t sure about the time of death, ’cause the cold and the snow do funny things to body temperature. But McWhorter wasn’t killed much more than three hours ago, I’ll bet. If the snow slowed his killer down enough, and if he takes his time at Katie’s house, maybe the Albany P.D. will walk in on him. Worth a shot.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “Now? Now I’m going to drop you off at the rectory. What do you think, you’ve got a free pass to tag along every step of the way?”

  Evidently, she did. It wasn’t that her arguments for coming with him were irrefutable. She didn’t actually refuse to get out of the truck. But somehow, she was still there when he cruised past the Burnses, noting the lit windows and the two vehicles in the driveway. “That doesn’t mean they’re not involved,” he said to her smug smile. “It just means they aren’t in Albany right now.” He put another call through to the station, asking Durkee and Flynn to head over to the Burnses after they had gotten hold of the Albany police. “And for god’s sake make sure someone in Albany calls me if they manage to collar anyone!” he concluded.

  Clare’s smile disappeared when they drove up to the tiny rental park where Kristen McWhorter lived. “What’s she drive?” Russ asked as they cruised slowly along a row of tightly packed, two-story town houses.

  “An ’eighty-nine Honda Civic,” she said, rubbing condensation off the window, trying to spot Kristen’s car somewhere in the parking lot. “Black.”

  “I don’t see it.”

  They parked in the first available space and waited. After a while, he turned on the truck’s radio and fiddled until he had the all-talk station. A gravelly-voiced man was dispensing investment and business advice to callers who identified themselves with names like “Randy from Salt Lake City” and who started each conversation with “I have an extra thirty thousand dollars in convertible debentures to invest . . .” The show broke frequently for mutual fund advertisements and the local weather, which could be summed up as deep and getting deeper.

  “I can’t believe Kristen had something to do with her father’s death.” Clare’s voice broke in on a guy complaining about his wife sheltering her income in off-shore banks.

  “I think you can’t imagine people you like doing bad things, that’s what I think,” Russ said. “You said the same thing about Karen and Geoff and Ethan.”

  “I never said I liked Geoff Burns,” she said, grinning.

  “Too bad it wasn’t McWhorter,” he said. “He made such a satisfying heavy.” She nodded. “Too bad it isn’t like ninety percent of murders,” he continued, “where the husband or the wife or the friend is standing there with the weapon in hand when the cops arrive, saying, ‘But I didn’t mean to do it!’ ”

  Headlights gleamed at the entrance to the parking lot. A small car crept in, tires churning against the snow. The black Honda Civic pulled in a few spaces away from the pickup. Its interior light flashed weakly as someone opened and shut the door. Russ could barely make out the figure struggling up the sidewalk through the screen of heavy snow, something sizable clutched in her arms. He and Clare both opened their doors, the contrast between the almost too-warm cab and the bone-chilling wind taking his breath away for a moment. He could hear the noise Clare made as her stupid little indoor boots sank into five inches of fresh snow.

  “Kristen?” he called.

  She whirled, bringing her fist up. Her keys stuck up between her fingers like stubby claws. She held a bulky knapsack against her chest.

  Russ raised his hands. “It’s me, Chief Van Alstyne. Reverend Fergusson is with me.”

  “What? What’s going on? Is it Katie’s baby?”

  “We need to talk to you. May we come in?”

  Under her black knit cap, Kristen looked at them suspiciously. “Okay.” She waded through the snow drifting across her walkway and unlocked the town house door. She kicked her boots against the side of the door to knock off the snow. Russ and Clare followed suit. Inside, they all crammed together on a tiny patch of tile, trying to wrestle off jackets and tug off boots without spreading any more snow than necessary onto the pale green wall-to-wall carpet.

  Kristen’s place was not what he’d expected from her all-black wardrobe and gothic hair. Instead of vinyl upholstery and posters of thrash groups on the walls, she had import-shop bamboo furniture in white with flowery pastel fabric. Reproductions of gauzy paintings of ballerinas hung over shelves filled with thin paperbacks and stuffed animals. The room of a young girl. One more thing Darrell McWhorter had taken away from her.

  “What are you doing out here so late?” Kristen asked, dropping the knapsack on a glass-topped coffee table. “Is there news on Katie’s case?”

  Clare looked at him as if to say, okay, how do you do this? Damned if he knew. Your father’s had his brains blown out tonight. And by the way, did you do it? If she didn’t have anything to do with McWhorter’s murder, he was going to start to look like her personal angel of death. First her sister, then her dad. “Where’ve you been for the last few hours, Kristen?” he asked.

  She raked her hand through her ink-black hair, ruffling it upwards. “I went out for some ’za with my friends tonight after class. I’m studying for my CPA at WCCC.” At Clare’s raised eyebrows, she explained, “The community college.” Russ suspected Clare had been reacting to the idea of Kristen as an accountant rather than puzzling over the acronym. “Look,” Kris
ten said, “Will you please tell me what all this is about?”

  The college class and the pizza joint should be easy to check out. “How long did it take you from the time you left the pizza place to the time you arrived here?” he said.

  Her face shifted, from annoyed and curious to alarmed and cautious. “Maybe half an hour,” she said. “Has something happened?”

  Clare stepped close to Kristen and laid a hand on the girl’s arm. “Kristen, your father was found dead tonight. He’s been murdered. If you know anything about it, please tell us.” She cut to the chase as quick as any cop he’d ever seen. Somehow, he’d thought a priest would be more . . . euphemistic.

  Kristen gaped. “He’s dead?” she asked in a shrill voice. Then she burst into tears.

  CHAPTER 16

  Russ felt like he was in a rerun of a bad television show. Kristen, sobbing and bleeding out her makeup, Clare holding the girl’s hand . . . if he wasn’t so goddamn tired he’d swear it was Monday morning instead of the middle of Wednesday night.

  “Why’s she broken up over this guy?” he half-whispered to Clare.

  She glared at him from over Kristen’s shoulder. “She’s not broken up like she was for Katie, for heaven’s sake. She’s angry.”

  Kristen wailed. “Now I’ll never get a chance to tell him what I thought of him!” She sucked air in great noisy gulps. “Now I’ll never know about Katie!”

  “If your father killed her, Kristen, he’s already paid for it. And if he didn’t, we’ll find who did. I promise you.” He watched Clare rock the girl in her arms and wondered if she would come to distance herself more from the people she wanted to help. She was going to crash and burn in a few years if she kept wading right in and feeling all this personally.

  She met his gaze and he saw how tired she was, smudgy dark circles under her eyes, the fine lines on either side of her mouth noticeable. “Kristen,” she said, “do you have any idea who your father was meeting tonight? Do you have any ideas who might have killed him?” Russ wasn’t entirely convinced Kristen was innocent, for all that her tears might be real. But until her alibi checked out one way or another, he’d go with it.