“We’ve got nothing.” Hadley flopped her checkbook open against the top of the television and began to write out the field trip payments. “We don’t even have an identity for the first guy.” She ripped the checks out and folded them in the permission slips as she crossed the kitchen. “Upstairs and brush your teeth, you two,” she said, zipping the papers into Hudson’s backpack. She scooped up the bowls—still half full of milk and cereal, in Genny’s case—and dumped them in the sink.
“I’ll take care of those,” Granddad said. “You better get going. They’re going to need you at the station.”
Granddad was convinced she was one rung below the deputy chief at the department. He seemed to think her twice-weekly trips to Albany were some sort of high-level investigator’s training, instead of Police Basic. Albany. Tonight. Shit. That meant she had to fill up her gas tank.
She ran up the stairs to her room, pausing just long enough to stick her head into the bathroom and say, “Brush!” without checking to see what the kids were actually doing. She had five bucks and change in a mug on her dresser. She emptied it into her pocket and then took her gun safe down from the closet shelf. She didn’t like to put on her belt before the kids left for school, but it couldn’t be helped when they were running late. She unlocked the safe box, checked the gun just like her instructor had told her, and snapped it into its holster. She wondered if she would ever feel at ease with the thing. She made sure everything else was secure—baton, cuffs, radio mount, ammo pouch—then buckled it on. She twitched the rig around a few times to try to get more comfortable, then banged on the wall adjoining the bathroom. “Finish up!” she yelled. “It’s bus time!”
Geneva bolted past her as she left the bedroom, with Hudson following. He eyed her rig. “Ooh, Mom,” he said. “Could I—”
She held up one finger. “No. I don’t even want you to ask. If you ask again, you’re getting a consequence.”
He gave her a Look and slumped downstairs, muttering just quietly enough for her to ignore it. In the kitchen, the kids shouldered their backpacks and kissed their grampy, who had abandoned the morning news long enough to make coffee. The pills lay untouched in the cup. “Take your medicine,” Hadley said. “And no smoking!”
“I’m not smokin’ no more,” he said, with the same expression Hudson got when he was lying.
“I’ll try to get home at lunchtime and return the cans and bottles.” She kissed Granddad. The deposit money and what she had in her pocket should get her to Albany and back. She hoped. She shooed the kids out the door before her and tossed her tote into the back of the car. The bus rumbled to a stop and Hudson and Genny climbed aboard without a backward glance—which, she supposed, was a good thing.
She spent the five-minute drive to the station worrying about what she was going to do for child care over the summer. Granddad was going back to work sooner rather than later, and even in a small town she didn’t want to leave Genny and Hudson home several hours a day. The Millers Kill recreation department had a seven-week day camp that sounded perfect, except that it was four hundred per kid. The sight of the TV vans parked in front of the station put an end to her pity party. There were three reporter/cameraman pairs on the front steps that she could see, bringing traffic to a near standstill as drivers on their way to work slowed down to rubberneck.
She pulled into the lot that ran beside and behind the station and killed her engine. She sat, hands still wrapped around the steering wheel, wondering how in hell she was going to get by those people without getting caught on camera.
VIII
A flash of copper near the asphalt caught Hadley’s eye. Kevin Flynn’s disembodied head rose from the edge of the parking lot. What the hell? He beckoned to her. She slid out of her car, snagging her tote bag, and hiked toward him. He was, she saw as she got closer, standing in a stairwell. Rotting leaves drifted over half the cement steps. At the bottom, a door stood ajar.
“In here,” he said.
She didn’t need to be told twice. She descended carefully so as not to slip on the leaves and ducked inside, Kevin treading on her heels. She was, she found, next to the evidence locker.
“They used to have cells on this floor in the olden days,” Flynn explained, tugging the heavy door back into place. “This was the way they took prisoners out.”
In the enclosed area, Flynn towered over her. She moved forward, well away from his body space, out of reach. She had decided she was going to approach him with a kind of big-sister courtesy unless and until he hit on her again. Cold and standoffish was a turn-on for some guys, and while she didn’t think Flynn was like that, she wasn’t taking any chances. She figured if she treated him like everyone else on the force did—as if he were sixteen years old—he’d get over his crush fast.
“Thanks for sneaking me in,” she said. She threaded her way past file boxes stacked three deep against the wall and headed for the stairs. “When did the reporters show up?”
“They were here when I got in,” he said, his voice echoing along the subterranean hallway. “The chief’s not a happy guy right now.”
At the foot of the stairs, she paused. Almost made him go up first. Then she pictured the two of them maneuvering around each other, changing positions. The hell with it. She mounted the stairs. If he wanted to get an eyeful of her brown poly-clad ass, so be it.
She could hear voices coming from Harlene’s dispatch when she got to the top. “—gotta make a statement,” MacAuley was saying.
“I know, I know.” That was the chief.
She walked in and was surprised to see the deputy chief spiffed up in the brown wool uniform jacket none of them ever wore, his cap tucked beneath his arm.
“Morning,” she said.
Harlene rolled her chair away from the board and stood up. “Looks like I better make more coffee.”
“Don’t bother on my account!” Hadley called after her, but it was too late.
The chief frowned at her. “Did you say anything to the reporters coming in?”
She shifted her tote bag to her other arm. “No, sir.” She could feel a solid mass in the doorway behind her, and knew, without turning, it was Kevin Flynn. “Flynn let me in through a downstairs door. By the evidence locker.”
MacAuley raised his brushy eyebrows. “How’d you know to let her in?” He directed the question well over her head.
“Um.” Flynn’s boots scraped the floor. “I was watching. From the interview room.”
MacAuley and the chief looked at each other. The chief opened his mouth.
“I really appreciated it.” Hadley leaped in before the chief could say anything. She spoke in a just-us-grown-ups tone, as if she were talking to Hudson’s teacher with him standing there. “He’s a thoughtful kid.”
“Mmm.” The chief gave Flynn one more considering look before turning back to MacAuley. “You sure you know everything you’re going to give them?”
MacAuley flicked an invisible piece of lint from his hat. “You want to talk to them? Go right ahead.”
“Hell, no,” the chief said. “I’ve seen myself on camera. I always look like I’m about to grab the mike and start threatening people with it.”
“Then trust me. I’m good at this.” MacAuley buffed the bill of his already shining cap on his sleeve and settled it square on his head. He stood up straight, tugging his jacket into place, and was transformed from his usual sly, slouching self to a gray-haired diplomat for law enforcement. He immediately spoiled the effect by winking at them. “Once more into the breach, dear friends.”
“C’mon,” the chief said, as MacAuley sauntered down the hall toward the station entrance. “Let’s get into the briefing room and catch everybody up.”
“Everybody” consisted of Eric McCrea, leafing through the Glens Falls Area phone book and jotting down addresses and numbers in his notebook. “Lyle and I have already gone over things this morning,” the chief said, tossing his folders on the table. “We got the report from Doc Scheeler o
n John Doe three’s fillings. The amalgam’s contemporary, no more’n five years old. Which jibes with Scheeler’s estimate of his age as between twenty-one and twenty-five. We have DNA samples from both bodies taken from behind the Muster Field, and the state lab’ll be happy to run a comparison for us within two to three years.”
Flynn groaned.
“What about dental records?” Hadley asked. It was a lot easier to risk sounding dumb when most of the force was someplace else.
“Dental records are great when you’re comparing an unknown victim to a known missing person. They’re useless in tracking down an identity. We’d have to go through every dental office in New York State—assuming this guy was from New York. Where we are, he could just as easily be from Canada or northern New England.”
“Anything on John Doe one?” Flynn didn’t sound hopeful.
“No.” The chief sat on the table and planted his boots against a chair seat. “It’s making me nuts. We got prints. We got those damn tattoos. Even if there’s no—” he cut himself off. Hadley was pretty sure the rest of the sentence would have been connection with the guys Knox saw. No one believed she had seen the same tattoos on Stud Boy: Santiago. She didn’t know why that bothered her. It shouldn’t matter. She got paid whether they caught whoever did this or not.
“John Doe one did time,” the chief went on. “I’m sure of it. So why don’t we have an ID for him yet?”
It was a rhetorical question. Hadley and Flynn looked at each other. “Eric.” The chief pitched his voice to include McCrea. “You got anything to add?”
“Hadley and I interviewed the members of the volunteer search-and-rescue team yesterday. No one noticed anything unusual.”
Hadley didn’t realize she was making a face until the chief asked her, “What is it?”
She glanced toward McCrea. He grinned. “John Huggins wanted to know what a sweet little thing like Officer Knox was doing on the force.”
The chief pinched the bridge of his nose. “Huggins has some . . . difficulties with women that don’t fit his—ah, traditional ideas.” He looked at Hadley. “He’s harmless, though. And our departments often work closely together, so let’s try to keep things civil.”
Hadley frowned. “So I shouldn’t have told him to eat shit and die?” The expression on the chief’s face was priceless. She held up her hands. “Just kidding. I was very civil.”
He gave her a withering look. “Kevin?”
“Between Mr. McGeoch and Agent Hodgden, I got a list of area farms that employ immigrant workers year round, and the names of laborers with legal permits and sponsors.”
The chief’s eyebrows went up. “Paula Hodgden just passed on that info?”
Flynn looked as if he couldn’t decide to be embarrassed or proud of himself. “I—um, may have given her the impression that I was going to be rounding up anybody I found who wasn’t on her list.”
“I see.”
“I didn’t promise anything.”
“Uh—huh.”
“Anyway, I’m ready to get out and interview people, but I have a problem. I don’t speak Spanish.” Flynn’s forehead creased, as if he were afraid his language skills were letting the department down. “I do speak some German. I took three years in high school.”
“That’s great, Kevin,” the chief said. “The next time we find a John Doe wearing lederhosen, you’re on it. In the meantime, however—”
“Hadley can go with Kevin instead of me,” McCrea said. “I’m going to be tackling the Christie relatives today, and it might be better if I don’t have someone inexperienced around.”
Well. That stung. But at least McCrea was up front with her.
The chief crossed his arms over his chest and stared into the middle distance. She was beginning to recognize it as his thinking stance. Finally he said, “Okay. But if I’m going to send the two of you out there, I want to maximize the possibility of getting useful information. I want you two in civvies.”
“What?” Hadley said.
“We’ve already noticed that the sight of a cop car and a uniform doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in these guys. Change into something you can wear with a shoulder or a pancake holster and go in one of your own cars.”
“I don’t have a pancake or a shoulder holster,” Hadley started to say, but her objection was drowned by Kevin’s excited, “You want us to go undercover?”
“No, Kevin. I want you in plainclothes. There’s a difference.” He looked at Hadley. “You can draw a holster from the gun locker.”
“Plainclothes,” Flynn breathed, in the way someone might have said, “The Holy Grail.”
“I haven’t practiced with a pancake or shoulder holster!”
A disapproving sound rumbled out of the back of the chief’s throat. He stood up. “Look. Maybe this is going too far too fast for you two—”
A clamor of noise from the front of the station cut him off. There was a flap-flap of footsteps, and a squeaky-pleased “Hel-lo!” from Harlene, and then MacAuley was ushering in Reverend Clare, whose neat black clerical garb looked at odds with her flushed face and falling-down twist.
“The Reverend here arrived near the end of the press conference,” MacAuley said. “Some of the reporters got a little overexcited.”
“Thank you so much, Lyle.” She laid a hand on MacAuley’s arm. “I wasn’t expecting to be keelhauled by the Fourth Estate.”
MacAuley’s eyes half closed, and he smiled a wide, wicked smile. “Shucks, ma’am. ’Tain’t nothing.”
“Don’t you have a case to clear?” the chief snapped. “What are you doing here?” he asked Reverend Clare. “Is it the Christies?”
“The Christies? No. I, uh”—she glanced around, taking in Hadley, Flynn, and McCrea—“need to speak to you.”
The chief gestured impatiently.
“Privately.”
He exhaled. “My office.” He motioned for her to go through the doorway ahead of him, perhaps not noticing Reverend Clare’s narrowed eyes and set jaw. They stalked away through the dispatch room. This time, Harlene didn’t say anything.
MacAuley pursed his lips. When they heard the chief’s door slam shut, he asked, “Did he have that stick up his ass before Reverend Fergusson got here?”
Hadley looked at Flynn to see if he was going to say anything. No way she was going to answer that one.
“Nope,” McCrea said.
“Interesting.”
Flynn shook his head, as if dismissing the chief, his moods, and the minister from his mind. “I’ve got a change of clothing in my car. Do you have something here, or do we need to hit your house before we go?”
“Wait a minute,” Hadley said. “I think he was about to tell us not to go.”
He looked at her like she’d grown a second head. “That’s why we have to move now. Do you wanna take your car? Or my Aztek?”
She thought about her less-than-half tank of gas. “Your Aztek,” she said, then realized she was committing herself. “Wait!”
“I’ll get you a pancake holster. Trust me, it’ll feel just as natural as the one you’re wearing now.”
Oh, there was a great recommendation.
“Do you want me to drive you to your house or meet you over there?”
“Meet me,” she said without thinking. Flynn nodded and headed out the door. “Wait!” she said.
A bellow from the chief’s office stopped her short, but Flynn kept right on going. The baritone yell was followed by a loud and impassioned alto voice, which was drowned out by more deep and angry words, which were topped by an even more strident female response. Hadley couldn’t make out what they were fighting about, but it sounded like a doozy.
“Interesting,” MacAuley repeated.
McCrea pushed back from his desk and gathered his notepad and phone book. “I’m getting out of the kill zone,” he said.
MacAuley nodded. “You might want to think about that as well,” he told Hadley.
She groaned and shoulder
ed her tote. Looked like will-she, nil-she, she was going to be driving around the North Country acting as Kevin Flynn’s translator. As she ducked down the stairs, the sound of her minister and her boss going at it hammer and tongs, she was already trying to come up with a civilian outfit as ugly and unflattering as her uniform. It wouldn’t do to give Flynn any ideas.
IX
Kevin Flynn was having the best day of his life. He had the window rolled down and his arm hanging out, the late-May sun warming his skin, dry sweet air blowing through the Aztek. No heater like in March, no manure smell like in April, no blackflies like in—well, they were a plague all summer long, but they weren’t getting in at forty-five miles an hour. He was in plainclothes, his polo shirt hanging loose over his Colt .44, managing—managing!—the investigation, deciding where they would go and who they would question next.
The best-looking woman in Millers Kill sat beside him, listening to his Promise Ring CD, and if she wasn’t saying much, she also wasn’t tearing his head off. When they had stopped for lunch, she had even let him buy her a sub, after he told her it’d be her turn next time.
She had on a T-shirt and those baggy shin-high pants only girls wear, with a vest to cover up her Glock 9mm, and she looked so damn cute it was all he could do to keep from grinning at her. It was a relief, he decided, getting smacked down by the chief. Embarrassing as hell at the time, but after he’d cooled down, the no-fraternization rule started to seem like a sturdy fence along an observation post at, say, Niagara Falls. Something that let him look all he wanted at the magnificent work of nature without getting swept away and killed.
For real, it didn’t get any better than this.
“Flynn,” she said. She leaned forward and turned down the music. “I don’t think this is getting us anywhere.”
For a minute, he panicked. Was she talking about . . . could she be talking about . . . then he realized she meant the interviews.
“All we’re getting is a bunch of negatives. ‘No, I didn’t see anything. No, I don’t know anything. No, I don’t recognize the man in the picture.’ ” They’d been showing the best head shot they had of John Doe one—although even cleaned up and in tight focus he didn’t look anything other than good and dead.